Hate on the Streets

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Ali Mohammadi, a 25-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, said a police officer asked him why he had not fought back when he filed a complaint after an attack on Aghios Panteleimonas square. “I went to the Police Station two days later... The only thing they asked me is where are you from, what happened...They told me, 'Ok if we find [them], we will call you, we will try.' They didn’t give me anything.”

Summary

As human beings, we shouldn’t be treated like this….
I am not an animal to be chased with sticks.

—Douglas Kesse, Ghanaian asylum seeker, January 11,
2012

In May 2011, in the days following the murder of a Greek
man, Manolis Kantaris, in central Athens, gangs of Greeks, in apparent
retaliation for the killing, indiscriminately attacked migrants and asylum
seekers, chasing them through the streets, dragging them off buses, beating and
stabbing them.

The flare up of anti-immigrant violence was cause for
serious concern. However, attacks against migrants and asylum seekers began
well before May 2011 and have continued since with frightening regularity both
in Athens and elsewhere in Greece. Migrants and asylum seekers spoke to Human
Rights Watch of virtual no-go areas in Athens after dark because of fear of
attacks by often black-clad groups of Greeks intent on violence. Yunus
Mohammadi, the president of an association of Afghans in Greece, told us he
started showing newer arrivals a map of Athens with a red line around areas
they should avoid. “This is exactly what I used to do in Afghanistan
with the Red Cross about places people shouldn’t go because of
fighting,” Mohammadi said. “And here I am doing the same thing in a
European country.”

A country that prides itself on its hospitality, Greece has
become over the past decade a decidedly inhospitable country for many
foreigners. While tourists are welcome, migrants and asylum seekers face a
hostile environment, where they may be subject to detention in inhuman and
degrading conditions, risk destitution, and xenophobic violence.

This report is based on
interviews Human Rights Watch conducted with 59 people who experienced or escaped
a xenophobic incident, including 51 serious attacks, between August 2009 and
May 2012. Victims of serious attacks included migrants and asylum seekers of
nine different nationalities and two pregnant women. Patterns emerge from the
victim testimonies: most of the attacks take place at night, on or near town
squares; attackers, who include women, work in groups, and are often dressed in
dark clothing with their faces obscured by cloth or helmets; bare-fisted
attacks are not uncommon, but attackers also often wield clubs or beer bottles
as weapons; most attacks are accompanied by insults and exhortations to leave Greece,
and in some cases the attackers also rob the victims.

Among the migrants and asylum
seekers Human Rights Watch interviewed, Ali Rahimi, an Afghan asylum seeker,
was stabbed five times in the torso outside an apartment building in Aghios
Panteleimonas in September 2011; Mehdi Naderi, an undocumented Afghan migrant,
has a prominent scar on his nose from a December 2011 attack in which he was
beaten by a mob with sticks and an iron bar near Attica Square; and Afghan
refugee Maria N.’s left hand was ripped open in August 2011 when two men
on a motorcycle hit her with a wooden club with iron spikes as they drove by.

Since the early 2000s, Greece has become the major gateway
into the European Union for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers from Asia
and Africa. Years of mismanaged migration and asylum policies and, most
recently, the deep economic crisis, have changed the demographic face of the
capital city. The center of Athens, in particular, has a large population of
foreigners living in extreme poverty, occupying abandoned buildings, town
squares and parks. Concerns about rising crime and urban degradation have
become a dominant feature of everyday conversations as well as political
discourse.

Parties across the ideological spectrum regularly and
explicitly link irregular immigration to the city’s ills. Undocumented
migration and crime in Athens were high on the agenda in the lead-up to the May
and June 2012 national elections. Nationalist, far right-wing parties such as
Golden Dawn have in recent years gained strength and popularity largely because
of their exploitation of anti-immigrant sentiment. Having gained a seat on the
Athens city council in 2010, Golden Dawn secured enough votes in the June 2012
national elections to enter Parliament for the first time in its history. It
will have 18 seats.

Exploitation of legitimate concerns about crime, combined
with widespread hardship in the economic crisis, appear to have nurtured a
climate of intolerance towards migrants and asylum seekers. As one resident of
Athens said, “I was never a racist but I’ve become one. Why
can’t we send them all home?” So-called “citizens’
groups” (ομάδες
πολιτών ) have emerged over the past
several years in the city center as self-appointed neighborhood watch units,
claiming they have organized to patrol the streets and protect residents by
getting rid of migrants. Virulent anti-immigrant posters signed by these groups
are on display around the city. Although no known police analysis or court
ruling has linked the citizens’ groups with groups carrying out violent
attacks on migrants and asylum seekers, there is some evidence to suggest that
the perpetrators of the violent attacks are members of or are associated with
these groups. Two men and one woman on trial for the stabbing of an Afghan
asylum seeker in September 2011 are allegedly members of a citizens’
group, and such groups have signed threatening posters on view in downtown
Athens. Local residents credit – or blame – these groups for taking
action against migrants, including the closing of the Aghios Panteleimonas
square playground because there were too many foreigners.

The true extent of xenophobic violence in Greece is unknown.
Government statistics are unreliable due to failures of the criminal justice
system, beginning with law enforcement, to adequately identify, investigate and
prosecute hate crimes. Underreporting by victims, particularly undocumented
migrants, is also a significant problem. In the entire country, the Greek
government reported just two hate crimes in 2009, and only one in 2008. In May
2012 the senior Athens prosecutor tasked with collating all information
relating to hate crimes told Human Rights Watch there were nine cases in Athens
from 2011 under investigation as possible hate crimes.

Non-governmental sources help
fill in the gaps. In June 2011, Doctors of the World director Nikitas
Kanakis estimated that 300 victims of racist attacks had sought treatment at
the organization’s clinic in Athens in the first half of 2011. Tzanetos
Antipas, the head of the Greek non-governmental organization (NGO) Praksis,
said at the same time that they had treated just over 200 victims in roughly
the same period. Finally, a network of NGOs recorded 63 incidents between
October and December 2011 in Athens and Patras.

Greece has clear obligations under international human
rights law to undertake effective measures to prevent racist and xenophobic
violence, to investigate and prosecute perpetrators, and should condemn
publicly and unequivocally such violence. These obligations apply whether the
perpetrators of the violence are agents of the state or not.

Yet the cases documented in this report demonstrate that
migrants and asylum seekers have little chance of seeing justice done. Victims
of xenophobic attacks in Athens face many obstacles in reporting crimes and
activating a police response to attacks. Prosecutors and the courts have so far
failed to aggressively prosecute racist and xenophobic violence for what it is.
Preoccupied by the economic crisis and concerned with control of irregular immigration,
national authorities—as well as the EU and the international community at
large—have largely turned a blind eye.

In theory, the legal tools and police guidelines are in
place. In keeping with binding EU law, Greece
amended its criminal code in 2008 to make racist motivation an aggravating
circumstance for sentencing purposes. A 2006 Ministry of Citizen
Protection circular to the Hellenic Police force ordered the police to
investigate possible racist motives in the commission of a crime when invoked
by victims or witnesses, when this interpretation is substantiated by evidence,
when admitted by the perpetrator(s), or when the alleged perpetrator(s) and
victim(s) of the crime belong to different racial, religious or social groups
or self-identify as such.

In practice, the police appear ill-equipped or ill-disposed
to investigate reports of racist violence. There is no specialized, practical
training at the police academies, and there are no specialized officers tasked
with pursuing or overseeing investigations into possible hate crimes. While
responders will provide immediate assistance—calling an ambulance, for
example— Human Rights Watch heard repeatedly that police discourage
victims from filing official complaints.

Victims we interviewed recounted police officers telling
them it was pointless to lodge a complaint if they could not positively identify
the perpetrators or that they should simply organize themselves to fight back. Police
told Human Rights Watch that it was difficult to investigate crimes involving
masked perpetrators. However, the police’s failure to take preventive
action or pursue investigations even in areas where violence is predictable and
recurring makes this justification ring hollow. Three victims who insisted that
they wished to pursue a case were told they would have to pay a 100 Euro fee (US$
125) instituted in late 2010 to discourage frivolous criminal complaints, even
though justice officials told Human Rights Watch that hate crimes would be
prosecuted ex officio, with no formal complaint (or fee) required from the
victim. Finally, undocumented migrants were told they faced detention if they
persisted in seeking to have a criminal investigation opened.

Indeed, fear of detention and deportation emerged from
interviews as a principal reason why migrants were reluctant to seek assistance
from the police in the aftermath of an attack, although Human Rights Watch did
not document any cases where victims were in fact subject to immigration
detention or deported from Greece after making complaints.

The response of the judiciary has also been inadequate. As
noted above, racist motivation was introduced in 2008 as an aggravating
circumstance in the commission of a crime, giving judges the discretion to
impose the maximum penalty for any given crime. To our knowledge, racism as an
aggravating circumstance has not once been applied in the nearly four years
since it was introduced. The Athens public prosecutor’s office has no
specialized prosecutors to handle directly or oversee hate crimes, including
racist and xenophobic violence.

National authorities have largely tended to downplay the
extent of the problem, but positive steps have been taken recently. An
inter-ministerial working group met in April 2012 to discuss targeted measures
to raise awareness of racist and xenophobic violence amongst the police as well
as efforts to improve recording of hate crimes. These include use of a special
form by the police and the criminal justice system, and the creation of a
centralized database located in the Justice Ministry. Also in April 2012, the
Justice Ministry asked the Attorney General to adopt specific guidelines for
prosecutors to help them address racist violence. Finally, there is discussion
about reforming criminal law to strengthen the scope and application of the
aggravating circumstance of racist motivation.

The European Union has an important role to play
in ensuring that Greece lives up to its obligations to effectively prevent and
prosecute racist violence. Thus far, European institutions have paid little to
no attention to increasing anti-immigrant sentiment and incidents of violence
against migrants and asylum seekers. Yet it is precisely the pressure on Greece
from its European neighbors to take responsibility for a disproportionate
number of asylum seekers on the one hand and secure its internal EU and
external borders on the other that has contributed to the present untenable
situation. The severe budget cuts arising from Greece’s austerity
measures have also strained the police force and the provision of services that
might help alleviate social tensions that fuel the violence.

However these realities do not relieve Greece of its duty to
counter racism and xenophobia. There is no excuse for allowing violent gangs to
harm migrants and asylum seekers with impunity. The Greek authorities must take
urgent action to crack down on this alarming phenomenon.

Key Recommendations

To the Greek Government

Publicly and unequivocally condemn, at the highest level,
instances of racist and xenophobic violence.

Moving quickly to institute the special form for recording
allegations of racist violence and the centralized database;

Ensuring obligatory and appropriate training at all levels and
in-service training on detecting, preventing, responding to, and investigating
hate crimes, including racist and xenophobic violence for all police officers; and

Disseminating detailed guidelines for police for the
investigation of hate crimes, including racist and xenophobic violence.

Adopt and implement a preventive strategy to counter xenophobic
violence, including appropriate deployment of law enforcement in areas with
high rates of such violence.

Ensure, either in law or through binding circulars, that
regardless of the nature of the offense, any crime that may be categorized as a
hate crime is subject to mandatory state action – investigation and
prosecution – without the requirement that victims pay the 100 Euro (US$ 125)
fee.

Improve the response of the judiciary by:

Reforming the Criminal Code to improve the scope and application
of the aggravating circumstance of racist motivation;

Ensuring appropriate training, including through inclusion of
special seminars in continuing professional education courses, for prosecutors
and judges in national and European anti-racism legislation; and

Encouraging the appointment of one or more specialized prosecutors
in relevant public prosecutor’s offices including Athens to provide
technical expertise to colleagues prosecuting such cases.

To the European Union

The European Commission’s Directorate General on Justice
should assess Greece’s compliance with its human rights obligations with
respect to preventing and prosecuting racist and other hate violence, and
allocate funding to support initiatives to address the deficiencies in state
response to racist and xenophobic violence, as well as public awareness-raising
campaigns.

Methodology

This report is based on Human Rights Watch research in
Athens in November-December 2011 and January and May 2012. We chose to focus on
Athens because background research, including media monitoring and exchanges
with NGOs in Greece, indicated that the problem of racist and xenophobic
violence was most acute in the capital. While the geographical scope of this
research and available data do not allow us to draw any conclusions about the
extent of xenophobic violence in the rest of the country, we believe lessons
can be drawn for actions on a national scale to arrest increasing xenophobia.

We interviewed 79 migrants, asylum seekers and legal foreign
residents of Greece. They came from a variety of countries, including
Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Iran,
Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Somalia, and Sudan. Fifty-nine interviewees had
experienced an attack, including 51 serious attacks, or escaped unharmed from
an attempted attack. Twenty interviewees had not experienced incidents relevant
to the focus of this report, though four had witnessed attacks.

Two Human Rights Watch staff carried out victim interviews,
both jointly and separately. A Greek-speaking staff-member conducted interviews
in Greek with interviewees able to express themselves in Greek. Both Human
Rights Watch staff conducted interviews in the native language of the
interviewee through the help of interpreters. A few victim interviews were conducted
in French, a language both researchers speak. Interpreters were paid for their
services.

Where noted, we have used a pseudonym to protect the
identity of undocumented migrants upon request. In
keeping with Human Rights Watch policy, we use pseudonyms followed by an
initial for all children. We spoke with one police officer on condition
of anonymity. In a few cases, interviewees declined to provide their real
names; in all other cases Human Rights Watch has their real names on file. All
interviewees were informed of the purpose of the interview, and that their testimony
might be used publicly. No incentives were offered or provided to persons
interviewed.

We also spoke with over a dozen staff from as many
organizations including Aitima, Praksis, the Greek Council for Refugees, the
Ecumenical Refugee Program, Doctors without Borders (Médécins
sans Frontières), Doctors of the World (Médécins du
Monde), and Babel (an NGO providing mental health care for migrants), as well
as migrant community associations including the Greek Forum of Migrants and
separate Greek Forum of Refugees, the Afghan Community of Greece and the
Pakistani Community of Greece. We met with representatives of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Greece and the former vice-president
of the European Court of Human Rights, a Greek national. Finally, we met with
His Holiness Archimandrite Father Maximus, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of
Athens and priest of the Aghios Panteleimonas church.

We had meetings with eight senior police officers at the
Ministry of Citizen Protection, eight prosecutors, one official in the Ministry
of Justice, and one elected member of the Athens town council. We also met with
the Greek Ombudsperson and her deputy as well as a staff member of the National
Commission of Human Rights. Almost all government interviews were conducted in
Greek with translation into English, in the presence of a Greek-speaking Human
Rights Watch staff member. In some circumstances, the Greek-speaking Human
Rights Watch staff member acted as interpreter; in most cases, a professional
interpreter was used. Two government interviews were conducted in French.

The Ministry of Citizen Protection denied our request to
meet with the ranking officers in the police stations of Aghios Panteleimonas,
Omonia, Kypseli and Akropoli.

I. Background

Greece is a country that prides itself on its hospitality.
But over the past decade it has become decidedly inhospitable for some
foreigners. While tourists are generally welcome, migrants and asylum seekers
face an increasingly hostile environment in which they risk detention in
inhuman and degrading conditions, destitution, and xenophobic violence.

There has been a dramatic increase of immigration to Greece
over the past twenty years. The collapse of communist regimes in the
neighborhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s triggered large-scale migration
from Balkan countries, in particular Albania. Between 1991 and 2001, the
immigrant population more than tripled to 7.3 percent of the total population,
with Albanians accounting for the largest national group.[1]

Since the early 2000s, Greece has become the major gateway
for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers from Asia and Africa, in part
because it shares a land border with Turkey, a major transit route into Europe.
The European Union external borders agency Frontex declared at the end of 2010
that Greece accounted for 90% of all irregular border crossings into the EU.[2]
In 2011, Frontex recorded 55,000 irregular border crossings at the
Greek-Turkish border, a 17 percent increase over the previous year.[3]
According to official Greek government data, Afghans comprised by far the
largest national group entering Greece in 2011, followed by Pakistanis.[4]
Greek authorities estimated in April 2012 that there were as many as one
million undocumented migrants living in Greece.[5]

Economic and Humanitarian Crisis

The failure of successive Greek governments to adopt
coherent migration policies, chronic mismanagement of the asylum system, and,
most recently, the deep economic crisis and resulting austerity have
exacerbated what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
described in late 2010 as a “humanitarian crisis.”[6]
Countless undocumented migrants and asylum seekers live in deep destitution,
occupying abandoned buildings, town squares, parks, and even forests. The
ultimate goal for many, whether they are economic migrants or asylum seekers,
is to transit through Greece to other countries in the European Union. Hundreds
of foreigners congregate in port cities such as Patras and Igoumenitsa looking
for a chance to stow away on trucks and ferries heading to Italy, often risking
life and limb to do so. Human Rights Watch also spoke with 17 migrants,
including ten children, in Patras in late November 2011 who described physical
abuse by law enforcement officials in and around the port area.[7]

It is impossible to estimate how many undocumented migrants
qualify for international protection because of the risks they face in their
countries of origin but are unable or unwilling to apply for asylum in Greece. Despite
reforms initiated in late 2010, the Greek asylum system remains largely
dysfunctional, with the lowest refugee recognition rate at first instance in
Europe (less than 1 percent in 2011) and significant obstacles to submitting
asylum applications.[8] At this
writing, the Central Police Headquarters in Athens was still accepting asylum
claims at the rate of twenty per week. In March 2012, UNHCR criticized the fact
that over 100 people, including women and children, sleep overnight outside the
police station every Friday in hopes of being among the twenty chosen to
register their asylum application on Saturday morning.[9]

Five asylum appeals committees, created in February 2011,
and five more created in September 2011, were tackling the heavy backlog of
38,000 cases as of October 2011.[10] In
March 2012 the government inaugurated two institutional reforms aimed at fixing
its dysfunctional handling of asylum seekers: a new Asylum Service and an
Initial Reception Service, which once fully operational should respectively
take over all responsibilities for processing asylum applications from the
police, and provide asylum seekers adequate reception facilities. Then Minister
of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrysochoidis acknowledged in April 2012 that
Greece had so far expended only 40 million Euros (US$ 50.2 million) out of the
250 million Euros (US$ 313.9 million) in allocated EU funding for immigration
and asylum management.[11]

The European Union’s Dublin II Regulation, which
generally assigns responsibility for examining asylum claims to the first EU
country in which an asylum seeker sets foot, has significantly increased the
burden on Greece.[12] The
Regulation allows member states to return asylum seekers to the country where
they first entered the EU; given Greece’s location at the EU’s
external border and popularity as a transit route into Europe, Dublin II has exacerbated
the country’s large backlog of asylum applications and appeals, while
adding strains to its overcrowded detention facilities.[13]
In 2011, numerous EU member states suspended Dublin transfers to Greece
following a January 2011 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the
return of an Afghan asylum seeker from Belgium to Greece exposed him to cruel,
inhuman, and degrading treatment in Greece.[14]

The pressure on Greece to take responsibility for a
disproportionate number of asylum seekers, on the one hand, and to prevent
third country nationals from traveling irregularly across its internal EU
borders on the other, means that many asylum seekers find themselves trapped in
what a 2008 Human Rights Watch report called “a revolving door.”[15]

Long-term Greek residents of the center of Athens, in
particular, have seen their neighborhoods change dramatically with the influx
of migrants and asylum seekers. This has had an impact on attitudes
towards such foreigners. One resident of Aghios Panteleimonas, spoke
approvingly of Golden Dawn’s work in his neighborhood. The party, he
said, “chased away all the blacks, who had flooded [us]…even in my
own building…it was full [of blacks]…but they left. Those who were
the dirty ones and had all the diseases left, because they had to.”[16]

Concerns about the impact of immigration on the social
fabric of local communities are legitimate. And the perceived rise in so-called
survival crimes by destitute migrants and asylum seekers, as well as
exploitation of these populations by organized crime, has given rise to genuine
fears. A survey in May 2011 found that eight out of ten residents of downtown
Athens had been the victims of a mugging, theft or burglary, and three-quarters
of respondents said they lived in fear of crime.[17]
One woman living in the Attica neighborhood interviewed for a documentary after
the May 2012 elections, clutched her handbag as she explained she didn’t
feel safe walking around as she used to, and no longer wears jewelry to avoid
being mugged. She blamed irregular immigrants.[18]

But the persistent linkage of immigrants with criminality
combined with increasing hardship caused by the economic crisis appears to have
nurtured anti-immigrant sentiment in Athens. As one resident of Athens said,
“I was never a racist but I’ve become one. Why can’t we send
them all home?”[19] Costis
Papaioannou, until recently the head of the National Commission for Human
Rights, an independent government advisory board, stated plainly that
“Since the [economic] crisis broke out, Greeks have absolutely become
more xenophobic…We have large groups of marginalized people, both Greeks
and immigrants, and the first group blames the second.”[20]

The Politics of Hate

Immigration issues have become a dominant feature of Greek
political debate. Undocumented migration and crime in Athens historic center
were high on the agenda in the lead-up to the May and June 2012 national
elections, with parties across the ideological spectrum explicitly linking
irregular immigration to urban degradation, crime and public health problems. Greeks
voted for a second time in June 2012 after political parties were unable to form
a majority coalition government following the May elections.

Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, the party that
won the largest share of the vote in the June 2012 elections, campaigned in
part on a pledge to reclaim Greek cities from immigrants: "Greece today
has become a center for illegal immigrants. We must take back our cities, where
the illegal trade in drugs, prostitution, and counterfeit goods is booming.
There are many diseases and I am not only speaking about Athens, but elsewhere
too.”[21]

In the months before the elections, the government adopted a
series of heavy-handed measures to demonstrate its attention to the issues. In
February, construction began on a highly touted 12.5 kilometer fence along the
border with Turkey in Greece’s Evros region, and in late March the
government announced a plan to build 30 new detention centers around the
country to house undocumented migrants pending deportation; sweep operations in
downtown Athens began immediately. Earlier that same month, the then Minister
of Citizen Protection Chrysochoidis, had blamed a ten percent increase in
muggings and robberies in 2011 on foreigners: “Greeks are a peaceful
people. The main problem is the presence of thousands of people who live here
illegally… We have one of the lowest rates of criminality in Europe. What
exists is petty crime, linked to foreigners.”[22]

Calling the growing population of undocumented migrants in
central Athens “a ticking time bomb for public health,” in April
2011 Chrysochoidis and then Health Minister Andreas Loverdos pushed legislation
through Parliament to permit detention of migrants and asylum seekers suspected
of representing a danger to public health.[23]
Carrying an infectious disease, belonging to a group vulnerable to infectious
diseases (an assessment which can be based on country of origin), being an
intravenous drug user or sex worker, or living
in conditions that do not meet minimum standards of hygiene are all grounds for
detention. Such legislative provisions are incompatible with many of Greece’s obligations under international
law including the obligations to protect the right to health, not to inflict
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, not to permit arbitrary
detention, and not to engage in discrimination based on status.

Populist, right-wing parties such as Golden Dawn, have in
recent years gained strength and popularity in part because of their exploitation
of anti-immigrant sentiment. Golden Dawn secured enough votes in the June 2012
national elections to enter Parliament for the first time in its history.
It will have 18 seats.

Golden Dawn is an unabashedly neo-fascist party with a logo
reminiscent of the Nazi swastika; its manifesto calls for the creation of a
People’s Nationalist State which does “not ignore the law of
diversity and difference in nature” and asserts that “[b]y respecting
the spiritual, ethnic and racial inequality of human we can build equity and
law in society.”[24] The
leader of the Golden Dawn, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, won a seat on the Athens
municipal town council in local elections in November 2010; he was filmed doing
the Nazi salute in the Athens town hall in January 2011.[25]

In an interview with Human Rights Watch before the
elections, Michaloliakos explained, “We want Greece to belong to the
Greeks. We are proud to be Greek; we want to save our national identity, our
thousands-year history. If that means we are racist, then yes we are. We
don’t want to share the same fate of the Native Americans. Right now, the
immigrants are the cowboys and we are the Apache.”[26]
He added that if Golden Dawn were in government they would give everyone asylum
“and cheap tickets on Easyjet, because they all want to go
elsewhere.”

In a March 2012 press release, the party went further. Calling
new detention centers a “pre-election fairy tale,” Golden Dawn
proposed laying anti-personnel landmines along the Greece-Turkey border in
Evros and placing special forces in the area with a license to shoot at will.[27]

Vigilante Groups

Over the past several years, “citizens’
groups” have formed in Athens neighborhoods like Aghios Panteleimonas and
Attiki, in the center of the city, as self-appointed neighborhood watch groups.
These groups claim to fill the void left by financially-strapped police forces
by patrolling the streets at night to protect residents and rid the streets and
parks of migrants. In 2009, a group claiming to be local residents locked the
gates of the playground next to the Aghios Panteleimonas church, to keep
immigrants out. Graffiti in blue and white letters (the national colors) on the
pavement reads “immigrants out of Greece” and “Greece our
homeland.”

Virulent anti-immigrant graffiti and posters are on display
in Athens. One particularly strident poster in Aghios Panteleimonas showed
horrific, bloody, but unexplained photographs (including one of a smiling woman
wielding a knife above the head of a bloodied child) with the writing in Greek:
“This is Islam. These are the calm people. This is the religion that
always seeks to expand. These are the people who steal, rape and kill
Greeks. Greeks, Wake up!”[28] Below
this is a long text in poor English directed at foreigners (capital letters in
the original), including the following:

RETURN TO YOUR COUNTRY NOW…YOU ARE NOT WANTED
HERE…We are angry with this government and all politicians that brought
you here and support you and defend you AND WE ARE DETERMINED TO PUNISH THEM
AND YOU. From now on, we will take every necessary action in order to force you
and the TRAITORS-POLITICIANS that help you to GET OUT OF THIS COUNTRY (or what
you left of it). YOU HAVE NO FUTURE IN GREECE. GO HOME NOW.

The poster is signed simply “Citizens of
Athens.” The full text and a photograph of the poster are in Annex I.

Many observers allege that these “citizens’ groups”
are responsible for vigilante violence against migrants and asylum seekers.[29]
Christos Rozakis, a former vice-president of the European Court of Human
Rights, told us not only does he see no organized effort to address the problem
of such groups but that the authorities may be relieved that there are groups
dealing with certain problems.[30]

There are also persistent accusations that Golden Dawn has
mobilized these groups, and that members of Golden Dawn participate in their
violent actions, although Human Rights Watch found no evidence to support the
allegations that violent attacks are directed or sanctioned by the party.[31]
Golden Dawn party members have been implicated in specific attacks, however.

Themis Skordeli, one of the three people standing trial for
the September 2011 stabbing of an Afghan asylum seeker, ran as a candidate in
the electoral district encompassing central Athens on the Golden Dawn roster in
the May and June 2012 elections. She was not elected. The trial is discussed in
Chapter V. Two party members who won parliamentary seats in the May 2012 were
detained, along with the daughter of Golden Dawn leader Michaloliakos, and
questioned by the police in connection with anti-immigrant violence during a
Golden Dawn rally on June 1, 2012. During the rally, a number of participants,
who evaded arrest, assaulted a Pakistani man who had to be hospitalized. The
party members were released without charge; Golden Dawn denied any involvement
in the violence.[32]

One resident of Aghios Panteleimonas complained to a
reporter in January 2011,

Initially we had an increase in criminality. Now we also
have the Golden Dawners threatening us if we don’t go to their
gatherings…We don’t know who to trust and denounce what is
happening to us…The problem is not the 15-year-old kids but their
instigators, those who appear in the guise of ‘indignant citizens’
and guide them to violence and terror against anyone who does not share their
views. Where are the state and the democratic institutions to protect us?[33]

An older woman who has lived in the neighborhood for thirty
years told Human Rights Watch it was a combination of Golden Dawn members and
local residents creating the problems. “It’s this big group that is
here [in the square] and every night at 9 p.m. we almost have heart attacks,”
she said. “There is total silence, suddenly they come and throw bottles,
bombs to the people.”[34]

Human Rights Watch spoke with a police officer who worked on
patrol for two years in a neighborhood in central Athens. When asked who is
involved in attacks on migrants and asylum seekers, he said, “Those who
beat migrants are Golden Dawners, or Citizens [Groups]. It’s very easy.
There are twenty houses with Greeks, and the rest are foreigners [in the
sensitive neighborhoods]. They say, ‘We gather here, we do this.’
And if someone knows a Golden Dawner, they call him. It’s not
difficult.”[35]

Golden Dawn’s perceived role in cleaning up
neighborhoods and protecting residents from crime is often cited as the reason
for the party’s success in the 2010 Athens municipal elections, giving
party leader Michaloliakos a seat on the city council. In a January 2012 interview,
Michaloliakos told Human Rights Watch that while “there is no organic
relationship between Golden Dawn and these groups, we support their activities.
Not illegal activities, however… Many of their members voted for us, and
members of Golden Dawn belong to these groups, but the crimes don’t come
from these groups.”[36] He said
Golden Dawn members found to be involved in unprovoked violence would be kicked
out of the party. Michaloliakos minimized the importance of the citizens’
groups, saying “they don’t really do anything, just some meetings,
some announcements. They don’t try to stop foreigners from living there
[in their neighborhoods]. Even if they tried, they couldn’t
succeed!”[37]

There are also persistent allegations, including statements
from high-ranking government officials, of collusion between the police and
Golden Dawn members. Numerous interlocutors interviewed by Human Rights Watch,
including a police officer, raised the possibility of collusion between the
police and extremist elements.[38] Chrysochoidis,
appointed Minister of Citizen Protection in March 2012 and who served in the
same position between February 1999 and March 2004, as well as October 2009 to
September 2010, said in a June 2011 interview that he had launched a purge of
police officers with close ties with Golden Dawn when he took power in 2009:
“I am not referring to old things. I am talking about two years
ago…there were Golden Dawn forces that helped the police do their
job.” When asked about the situation in 2011, he said, “I do not
know, I do not exclude anything, the phenomenon might have a tail…”[39]

II. Xenophobic Violence in Athens

They say it’s a free country but then they beat me
because I’m a migrant … I don’t go outside when it’s
dark.

—Qadir Hossaini, Afghan legal migrant, Athens,
December 6, 2011

On May 10, 2011, a 44-year-old Greek man, Manolis Kantaris,
was fatally stabbed by assailants who stole his video camera as he prepared to
take his wife to the hospital to give birth. Just hours later, and before any
official announcements were made about the national origin of the attackers,
protesters converged on the area where the attack took place shouting
“Foreigners Out” and “Greece is for Greeks.”[40]
Over the next few days, gangs of Greeks attacked migrants and asylum seekers
indiscriminately in central Athens in apparent retaliation for the murder. They
chased them through the streets, dragged them off buses, and beat and stabbed
them.

The upsurge of anti-immigrant violence was a cause for
serious concern. However, attacks against migrants and asylum seekers began
well before May 2011, and continue with frightening regularity. Migrants and
asylum seekers interviewed by Human Rights Watch spoke of virtual no-go areas
in Athens after dark because of fear of attacks by vigilante groups. Yunus
Mohammadi, the president of an association of Afghans in Greece, told us he
shows newer arrivals a map of Athens with a red line around areas they should
avoid. “This is exactly what I used to do in Afghanistan with the
Red Cross about places people shouldn’t go because of fighting,”
Mohammadi said. “And here I am doing the same thing in a European
country.”[41]

The true extent of xenophobic violence in Greece is unknown.
Government statistics are unreliable due to failures of the law enforcement
agencies and criminal justice system to adequately respond to, identify,
investigate, and prosecute hate crimes. Underreporting by victims, particularly
undocumented migrants, is also a significant problem. In the entire country the
Greek government recorded just two hate crimes in 2009, and only one in 2008.[42]
In December 2011 an official at the Ministry of Citizen Protection told Human
Rights Watch there were three cases from 2010 and 11 cases from 2011 under
investigation as possible hate crimes.[43] In a
May 2012 interview, Dimitris Zimianitis, a prosecutor who serves as liaison for
the Greek government with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, indicated
there were nine cases from 2011 under investigation as possible hate crimes in
Athens.[44]

To fill the gaps in official data and in the wake of growing
evidence of violent attacks on migrants, the National Commission for Human
Rights—an independent government advisory body—and the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spearheaded the creation, in October
2011, of a network of 18 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to
systematically record racist attacks. The first results of the pilot project
were presented in March 2012.

The Network recorded 63 incidents between October and December
2011 in Athens and Patras. Forty-two incidents involved physical injury,
including twelve involving serious injury. Eighteen of these incidents involved
police officers, while the rest were perpetrated by private citizens.[45]
Most victims were undocumented migrants (27) and asylum seekers (23), from
Afghanistan (25) and sub-Saharan Africa (21).[46]

Doctors of the World and the Greek NGO Praksis, both members
of the recording network, run health clinics in downtown Athens. Both
organizations have expressed serious concerns about the increasing number of
migrants and asylum seekers seeking medical assistance following what victims
described as racist attacks. The two groups only began systematically recording
cases of racist violence as part of the Network’s pilot project in
October 2011. But in June 2011, Doctors of the World director Nikitas
Kanakis estimated that 300 victims of such attacks had sought treatment at the
organization’s clinic in the first half of 2011. Tzanetos Antipas, the
head of Praksis, said at the same time that they had treated just over 200
victims in roughly the same period.[47]

In the course of our research, Human Rights Watch interviewed
victims of 51 serious attacks between August 2009 and May 2012. Victims were
from Afghanistan, Somalia, and seven other countries; they included two
pregnant women. Patterns emerge from the victim testimonies: most of the
attacks take place at night on or near town squares; attackers work in groups,
include women, and are often dressed in dark clothing with their faces obscured
by cloth or helmets; bare-fisted attacks are not uncommon, but attackers also
often wield clubs or beer bottles as weapons; most attacks are accompanied by
insults against the migrants and exhortations to leave Greece, and in some
cases the assailants also rob their victims.

A number of victims said women actively participated in the
assault. Jereer K., a 17-year-old undocumented Somali boy, was attacked by four
men and two women on motorcycles near Aghios Panteleimonas Square in November
2011: “They attacked me with sticks and were kicking me,” he said.
“One lady hit me, so much. She was around 20 years old, with thick black
hair with red in it, dark complexion.”[48] Saadia,
a 20-year-old Somali, was eight months pregnant when four men and one woman
attacked her in the same area in April 2012. They yelled insults, slapped her
and kicked her to the ground. They ran away when she clutched her stomach; she
thought they might not have understood she was pregnant until that point
because she was wearing a loose dress. Her child was born healthy a few weeks
later.[49]

Not included in this figure are eight comparatively minor
incidents in which the interviewee was approached menacingly, chased, slapped
or otherwise lightly accosted, or spat on.

It is impossible to know how many attacks were thwarted by
the intervention of passers-by or because the intended victim was able to
escape. We spoke with ten people who told us of their own near misses, and a
Human Rights Watch staff member witnessed an attempted attack in front of the
Navy Tribunal in Piraeus (the port of Athens) on December 16, 2011, where a
large group had gathered in support of 39 members of Hellenic Coast Guard
Underwater Missions Unit on trial for chanting in unison racist slogans during
the Greek Independence Day Parade on March 25, 2010. A group of black-clad
youths surrounded a South-Asian man with apparent intent to harm him, but were
ultimately convinced to desist by an older demonstrator. We note also that we
learned of four incidents in which the person we interviewed escaped harm but someone
else was injured.

May 2011

On May 10, 2011, in downtown Athens, Manolis Kantaris was
murdered during the theft of his video camera as he prepared to go to the hospital
for the birth of his child. This crime triggered widespread attacks on foreigners
on the streets of the city after his killing was attributed to migrants.

The worst of the violence occurred on May 12, when a
21-year-old Bangladeshi man named Alim Adbul Mana was stabbed to death and at
least 25 people were hospitalized, according to news reports, with stab wounds
or injuries sustained from severe beatings.[50] A
reporter from the Associated Press who witnessed the attacks described a horrifying scene on May 12:

Several hundred youths, dressed in black and some wielding
bats, were involved in the daytime attacks in an area where thousands of Asian
and African immigrants live. Immigrants were chased through narrow streets of
the city’s Kato Patisia neighborhood and punched and kicked to the ground
by groups of attackers…Thugs in motorcycle helmets beat up immigrants,
sending others fleeing for safety amid heavy rush-hour traffic. Similar attacks
have occurred over the past two days. The black-clad ultranationalist youths
marched through migrant areas… Male and female protesters were seen
taking part in the beatings.[51]

Olivier Abdoulai, a 30-year-old Congolese, was out on the
streets when he saw the anti-immigrant demonstration on May 12 and changed
course.

It was the day they hunted men in Omonia. Two days after
the Greek man’s death. They had red flags and bats. They hit people
with the bats: blacks, Pakistanis, Arabs…I saw them hitting
[people]… and a Greek man said, ‘Be careful, you shouldn’t go
that way because they’re hitting people. I didn’t see any
police…In the group [of attackers] there were men and women, mixed ages. They
were yelling in Greek, I couldn’t understand. They were yelling, they
swung their bats, they hunted down foreigners.[52]

Virtually all the migrants and asylum seekers we
interviewed who had been in Athens in May 2011 said it was a period of intense
fear. One Afghan man who did not want to give a name told us simply, “In May we understood we would be attacked. We only went outside for
essential things. Otherwise, we stayed inside. Since then we don’t go out
at night. When we go out, someone watches from the window to see if we get
attacked.”[53]

Badara Gueye, a 28-year-old
Senegalese man, also hid: “We
stayed indoors for two days… One day we opened the door to look
outside. They saw us and the racists said ‘come here, we’ll kill
you.’”[54]Mohammed Idress, a
33-year-old Sudanese man, said he escaped several attempted attacks in this
period. “You know I am an athlete in Sudan. I run the Marathon.
Nobody caught me. Because of my legs. Three or four times they found me, but
they never caught me. Because whenever I see two or three motorcycles or
groups, I run.”[55] Modou
Ndiaye, a 31-year-old Senegalese, told us he managed to evade an attack by a
group of roughly thirty men, dressed in black and armed with bats, in the Omonia
neighborhood.[56]

Abuubeker Adam, a 23-year-old Somali man, managed to avoid
harm on several occasions during the May violence. On one occasion a few days
after the murder of Kantaris, Adam was in an internet café, along with
many other Somalis when a group of fifteen people, including one woman, burst
in. Adam remembered that the people in the group were dressed in black and
wearing helmets, and had with them metal objects, bottles and knives.
“They got inside, they counted [us] and then they asked ‘any other
people inside?’ We said no, and they left. There was a lot of police in
the streets at that time.”[57]

Witnesses to the violence interviewed by Human
Rights Watch spoke of vigilante groups forcing people to get off buses, or
beating them up when they disembarked at bus stops. Arif Muhammadi, an
interpreter Human Rights Watch used for some of the interviews, said he watched
the violence from an upstairs window on Chalkokondyli Street: “I saw how
the fascists went on the buses and when they saw an Afghan they pulled him off
and beat him. I saw this.”[58] Qadir
Hossaini, another interpreter who works for the humanitarian NGO Médécins
du Monde (Doctors of the World), said he was taken to and from work by his
employers during this period because taking the bus was too dangerous.[59]
Many others hid indoors, according to migrants interviewed by Human Rights
Watch.[60]

Youssef, a 26-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, told us he was
attacked when he got off a bus at Aghios Panteleimonas Square.

I saw some people on the road, like 15 or 20
people…They stopped the bus…and five or six men came inside. They
had sticks and said ‘down, down, down’ to all the foreigners...
This thing had happened in Iran, it reminded me of Iran. There [in Iran], they
[the Police] stop the bus, enter inside and choose whoever looks Afghan and
send them back to Afghanistan. But this is Europe, I said to myself. This
happens in Europe. And not by the police, but by normal citizens. The men said
the foreigners had to get off, hitting them. People outside were singing Greece
is for Greeks. People getting off were hit. I got off, and got hit on the
back. I thought I’d have more trouble if I spoke Greek so I said some
German words I knew and I pushed and I escaped. A car almost hit me. I saw
others running too, and others ran after them. Someone ran after me too but
didn’t catch me.[61]

Youssef said all of the assailants were men, most of them
wearing sweatshirts, and some of them hooded. He did not report the attack to
the police because he had no faith they would help him.[62]

There are conflicting reports about police behavior during
the worst of the violence. Riot police were out in force during and after the
demonstration and engaged in “running battles” with attackers,
according to some press accounts.[63]Abubeker Adam told us that though he had to insist,
the police had responded to his call for help, escorting him and a friend down
Tritis Septemvriou Street (where the murder of Kantaris took place), and
encircling them to protect them from an angry mob.[64]

At the same time there were
allegations of police failing to act to prevent or end the violence, or arrest
those responsible. Badara Gueye, who recalled seeing hundreds of people armed
with bats, complained that the police “did nothing.”[65]Abduwahab Mohammed, a 23-year-old Somali, told
us what happened when a large group attacked a gathering place for the Somali
community: “The police came and just stood and the racists ran
away… The police told the Somali people to go home…and then the
police left.”[66]

On May 16, 2011, Athens mayor Yiorgos Kaminis condemned what
he called political violence by extremist groups in some parts of the city and
accused the police of inertia in combating right-wing attacks on migrants.[67]
A few days later, he complained that “the police are slow to react or are
scandalously absent when extreme rightist groups carry out criminal attacks on
migrants.”[68]

It does not appear that
anyone was ever charged in connection with the 2011 May violence.
Although a police statement on May 12, 2011, indicated that 47 people (40
Greeks and 7 foreign nationals) were brought in for questioning that day, Human
Rights Watch was unable to learn whether charges were brought or whether
anyone was brought to trial and if so what the charges were. In a letter dated
May 17, 2012, the Athens prosecutor office informed Human Rights Watch that the
events have been “classified in the File of Unknown Perpetrators.”
Two Afghan men were arrested for the murder of Manolis Kantaris on May 10, 2011; according to the Athens
prosecutor’s office the case is still under investigation.[69]

Continuing Violence

Violent attacks on migrants and asylum seekers in Athens
neither began nor ended in May 2011. As noted above, Human Rights Watch
documented 51 serious attacks between August 2009 and May 2012.

Although the majority of
those interviewed who had experienced an attack were men, we also spoke with
seven women who told us about being attacked. Two of these women were pregnant
at the time of the attack. Five of the women are Somali while two are
Afghan.

Human Rights Watch research and the select testimonies below
suggest that large squares in central Athens such as Aghios Panteleimonas
Square, Attica Square and Victoria Square are particularly dangerous areas for
anyone who does not look Greek.

Aghios Panteleimonas

The repeated attacks on the home of Razia Sharife, an Afghan asylum seeker and single mother of three, illustrate the
intensity of anti-immigrant activity in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood.
Her street-level apartment next to Aghios Panteleimonas Square has been
attacked numerous times, including four times in January 2012 and one time in
April 2012. In three incidents in January, individuals threw bottles and rocks
at her windows and doors. The fourth incident that month, on January 15, 2012,
was more serious: Sharife said someone she recognized as a neighbor first broke
the windows then threw tear gas into the apartment. She believes he then
sprayed a fire extinguisher into the apartment, causing her to fear that
“he wanted to burn us alive.”[70] In
April 2012, a large group of men with their faces obscured actually entered her
apartment, broke beer bottles all over and destroyed furniture. They then left.
None of those in the apartment at the time, who included her three young
children (a three-year-old, and eleven-year-old twins), were injured.[71]

Human Rights Watch interviewed Sharife for the first time
on January 9, 2012, shortly after individuals had thrown bottles and stones at
her windows and front door. Sharife explained:

Every time they pass here this happens. Three days ago,
they came and were hitting the door with their legs…today they broke the
window and the door. At first they threw bottles and then they broke the glass
with stones and threw stones inside and then they started kicking the
door… They wear black clothes and…hoods and they do these
things… Today when this happened I called the police… They came,
they took my statement…and they told me they cannot do anything and that
I had to go…file a complaint. Until now I have made three
complaints…once in 2010 and two times in 2011. I go there and they say to
me they will search…but they have done nothing… Today there were
[only] men but often there are also two girls that have dogs. The girls
too wear hoods and wear black… Every day they are sitting at the
café next to the church… Why can’t they [the police] catch
them?[72]

Human Rights Watch observed the broken window and cracks in
the door.

When Human Rights Watch researcher visited Sharife’s
apartment on January 13, 2012, to conduct interviews with other Afghan victims
of attacks, she herself witnessed an attack on the apartment. There were a
dozen people in the apartment at the time, including Sharife, her three
children, the researcher, and seven Afghan men.

The Human Rights Watch researcher was sitting with an
interpreter near the curtained window that looked out onto the street when she
heard a loud noise as individuals outside began to hit the door with something
she could not identify. “The door is made of thick glass and I could see
the cracks appearing and the shadows of people on the other side of the
door,” she recalled. Everyone stayed inside for the duration of the
attack, roughly three minutes, and the researcher called the police as soon as
it ended (9:23 p.m. according to her cell phone records). [73]

The police at the scene took information from Sharife and
the Human Rights Watch researcher about the attack, but neither was able to
give a description of the assailants because they had both remained inside
during the attack. Sharife explained about the previous attacks and told the
police about the group that regularly gathers on Aghios Panteleimonas Square.
The police left shortly afterwards to search for the attackers; they did not
interview anyone else in the apartment or anyone in the Afghan-owned internet
café next door, which was open at the time.

After the police had left, the Human Rights Watch researcher
spoke with an Afghan man who had witnessed the attack from the café; he
said there were five or six men who beat the door with hammers. Said Jafari,
the 40-year-old owner of the internet café, and one of his employees
told Human Rights Watch the next day that they had seen two or three men
attacking the door while others stood on the corner watching. All were dressed
in black and wearing hoods, according to Jafari.[74]
Outside the apartment door, the researcher observed three big stones as well as
a broken bottle of beer.

Sharife says the police returned three times that evening,
each time different officers, to ask more questions about the incident. The
following morning, officers from the Aliens police also visited: “They
asked me for my pink card. I gave it. They said, ‘You are not
Afghan, we don’t believe you, prove to us that you are Afghan.’ I
had a passport and I showed it to them and they left.”[75]

Accompanied by the same Human Rights Watch researcher and an
interpreter, Sharife filed an official complaint at the Aghios Panteleimonas
police station on January 14, 2012. The police officer who took Sharife’s
statement insisted that there was a mandatory 100 Euro (US$ 125) fee to file
the complaint. He said the police are under orders from the prosecutor’s
office to not accept complaints without the fee, and that complaints forwarded
to the prosecutor without the fee are archived immediately. Ultimately he
accepted the statement without the fee, and in an email on March 13, 2012, the
Aghios Panteleimonas police station informed Human Rights Watch that the
Sharife’s complaint had been forwarded on January 18, 2012 to the Athens
Public Prosecutor. The prosecutor reportedly ordered a preliminary
investigation on January 31, 2012. The message further stated that “daily
foot and car patrols are dispatched from our service for the policing of the
area under our responsibility in order to prevent criminal acts against
citizens and for the enforcement of existing laws.”[76]

Sharife also called the police after the incident on January
15, 2012, when assailants sprayed tear gas into her apartment, and again after
a further attack in April 2012. She said the police came on both occasions,
took her statement, and urged her to relocate. She has not heard from them
since, nor is she aware of any developments in the investigation, despite the
fact that she provided information on the neighbor she suspects of involvement
in the January 15 attack.[77]

Said Jafari, the 40-year-old Afghan owner of the internet
café next to Sharife’s apartment, told us he has had to change his
store-front window three times because of similar attacks. There were two
attacks in 2010, and one in August 2011. On that last occasion, someone wrote
“Foreigners Out” in blue letters on the store-front shutters. After
Jafari reported the incident to the Aghios Panteleimonas police station, the
police painted black markings over the words to try to obscure the message, but
the writing is still clearly visible. Jafari complained that he was refused a
copy of the complaint he filed, and that the police took no action in response
to his repeated reports to them linking a group of people who gather at a
café on the corner of the square to these attacks.[78]

Human Rights Watch documented 23 other serious attacks that
took place in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood between August 2009 and
April 2012. Three of these are described below.

Safar Haidari, December 2011

Safar Haidari is a
29-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan and is the vice-president of a cultural
association called Nour. On December 23, around 8 p.m., he was attacked roughly
200 meters from the Aghios Panteleimonas police station. A group of 10-15 men,
who all appeared to be around or under 30 years old, wearing helmets or hoods,
approached him, asked him where he was from, and then one of them punched him
in the right eye. He fell to the ground and then the group began to beat him
with sticks and kick him. The assailants stole his mobile phone and cigarettes,
and then left.

In front of me there was a store with people…My body
was hurting and I couldn’t move too much…I went there. Two or three
people in the store saw what happened. I asked in what direction they [the
attackers] had gone and they told me that half of them headed towards Acharnon
Street and the other half towards Attica Square. I had a second phone with me
because I had it in my pocket and they didn’t take it and I called the
police. Fifteen to 20 minutes later two police motorcycles came by…I
don’t know if they came because I called or they wanted to go somewhere
else. I told them what happened. They asked for my papers. At that moment I was
in a really bad situation because I couldn’t see well and they asked for
my papers. I said, ‘Ok, I have papers but you should leave in order to
find those who just left. They must be somewhere close; they must be in
Attiki, in Acharnon.’[79]

The patrol officers
told him to report the crime at the police station. Haidari did go the station,
but left after 20 minutes or so, without filing a complaint, because he was in
pain and felt the police were not attending to him. “There were five
policemen. My head was hurting because I was hit on the head. I said I cannot
wait because I wanted to go the hospital, but the policeman said to me, ‘Now
we cannot do anything, we are busy, you should wait.’ But I saw the five
policemen in the office drinking coffee and chatting. I made a remark to
them. They told me again to wait.”[80]

Haidari returned to
the police station on December 27, but again left after waiting for what he
felt was too long. “There was also an old Greek man there. They served
him immediately. I waited around 20-30 minutes. I asked how much longer I have
to wait and they told me that they are very busy and cannot do anything now. Then
I left.”[81]

Yasser Abdurraham, December 2011

Abdurraham, an 18-year-old Somali, said he was attacked in
early December 2011 in front of the Aghios Panteleimonas church by six or seven
men on motorcycles.

It was late, around 2 a.m. I was walking home alone. They
called to me—‘Come on, come on, Africa, Africa’—and I
walked over and they hit me…with a beer bottle. It broke on my head and
they slashed my wrist when I held it up [to defend myself]. They punched me in
the face, cracked a tooth, and my nose. I don’t know why they did this.
They didn’t say anything after they started hitting me. The police came
and they ran off on their motorcycles. I showed them [the police] my wrist and
I said, ‘Box box’ [to indicate he had been beaten] and they said,
‘Hey Africa’ and made a face and left. I didn’t go back to
the police [to report it]. They don’t do anything for people like me.[82]

Mina Ahmad, October 2011

Though she couldn’t remember the exact date, Mina
Ahmad, a twenty-year-old Somali woman, told us she was attacked near the end of
October 2011, when she was six months pregnant, in the vicinity of the Aghios
Panteleimonas church. She was with her infant daughter and was six-months
pregnant. Five or six men, all wearing black, approached her as she was about
to cross the street.

They asked me first, ‘Where are you from?’ I
said Somalia. When I answered they tried to take my daughter away… They
hit me on my head with a wooden stick… I fell down bleeding. When I fell
down and they saw I was bleeding they ran away. My daughter was crying. I
couldn’t see her but I heard her cry behind me… I called some
friends. All the people [around at the time of the attack] they were watching
but nobody helped me. Friends came to help me. I didn’t go the hospital,
I stayed at home… I took coffee and put it on the wound. Now I have a
small scar. [At the time] I just thought about the baby inside me. It
didn’t matter if I was hurt. I just thought about the baby and my
daughter.[83]

Though upset, Ahmad’s daughter
was unharmed; Ahmad’s son was born healthy a month later. According to
Ahmad, the attackers yelled at her, “Get out of the country!” Ahmad
has been in Greece since 2009. Undocumented at the time of the attack and our
interview, she has since applied for asylum. She did not report the attack to
the police.

Attacks elsewhere in Central Athens

Xenophobic violence is not limited to the Aghios Panteleimonas
neighborhood. We documented 19 attacks in other areas of downtown Athens, as
well as a five in other neighborhoods of the city. Below are four cases from
the Attiki and Victoria neighborhoods in the center of the city.

Douglas Ebenezer Kesse, January 2012

A 32-year-old Ghanaian asylum seeker, Douglas
Ebenezer Kesse was assaulted near a big tram depot in the vicinity of Attiki
train station on January 9, 2012. He was walking down the street between 8:30
and 9 p.m. when a group of about ten young men dressed in black with three dogs
attacked him.

The first thing, one of them asked me, ‘Hey friend
where are you from?’ That is the only thing, only words that I could
remember. All of a sudden… they rushed on me with sticks. All the people
like that. All of them would rush on me and started beating me... I fell down,
when I got up, because I was struggling for survival, because many people were
beating me up, I got up, I ran again, and the dogs chased me, they brought me
down, they beat on me again. The third time I got up I was running, they used
their sticks to hit my legs and I fell down again, so for the fourth time, I
was able to run just a distance. Some cars were coming like this, towards the
direction so they left. I shouted. I’m a Christian so the only words that
I know could save me is Jesus Christ. So I begin to shout to call the name of
Jesus, ‘Jesus, Jesus!’ There were some people on the street but
they were just looking at the action, like a movie… Nobody came to my
assistance.[84]

The attackers also stole Kesse’s wallet which he told
Human Rights Watch contained a large sum of money he needed to pay his rent.
After recovering from the attack at home, Kesse went later that night to the
Kypseli police station on Patision Street near America Square, the closest to
where he lives. He was told they could do nothing and that he needed to report
the attack to the Aghios Panteleimonas police station. Kesse did not do so.

The experience, the only attack
in four years of living in Greece, has marked Kesse. He explained,

I feel very bad because, as human beings, we
shouldn’t be treated like this. We know that in Europe, these things
shouldn’t happen…because it’s not in the jungle. I am so much
depressed and so much downhearted to see something like this happen to somebody
who is seeking political asylum and a human being also. I am a human being; I
am not an animal to be chased with sticks.[85]

Mehdi Naderi, December 2011

Naderi, a twenty-year-old Afghan who arrived in
Greece in September 2011, was injured when he and two friends were attacked on
a pedestrian street near Attica Square on the night of December 12, 2011. We
spoke with all three the following day. Naderi said they were just walking down
the street when a group of roughly 15 people attacked them.

They didn’t say anything. Suddenly they attacked,
they beat me, and I left. It was around 8:30 or 9 p.m. We were on the
street… It was dark and we did not understand what happened. We
didn’t see them. Suddenly they attacked. But we realized that those who
hit us were men. They suddenly appeared from inside the park, in Attica Square,
and started hitting. They were saying something but we didn’t understand.
But they had in their hands woods and irons. They have hit me everywhere, and
in my body also. It is not only my nose and my head… I started running
but there was a lot of blood flowing. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and then I stopped
and my friends caught me. They were chasing us for a long time. They were
behind us. At the time they attacked, my two friends escaped. I ran a lot.[86]

Naderi and his friends
went home, but later, with the help of an Afghan activist, called an ambulance
and went to the Korgialeneio Benakeio Athens General Hospital for treatment.
Naderi received stitches to his head and nose. According to Naderi and Medhi
Sarwari, one of the friends who witnessed the attack and accompanied him to the
hospital, there were three other injured migrants and numerous police officers
that night at the hospital. It was unclear how the migrants sustained their
injuries.[87]

Naderi did not report
the attack to the police. “I didn’t think to go the police because
I am sure that if I go, the police won’t help me, they will bother me
more. That’s what most of the people say. They say they go to the police
and the police do nothing and scare them.”[88]

Hassan Mohamed, October 2011

A 25-year-old Somali without papers in Greece, Hassan
Mohamed was attacked on October 29 as he returned home from an internet
café near Victoria Square.

I was talking on the phone and they came at me from the
front. Maybe 20 to 25 people. They beat me. I ran and they beat me. I fell
unconscious. The police came and called an ambulance. They told me to come back
after the hospital with the papers. I went back, I told them, I am the one you
took from the street, this is the paper with everything: blood test, scan,
x-rays, I had a broken bone under the right eye.

Mohamed ultimately gave up filing a complaint because he was
concerned he would be detained because of his undocumented status.[89]

Mahmoud and Maria, August 2011

Mahmoud and Maria are a couple from Afghanistan with refugee
status in Greece. On August 5, 2011, near Attiki train station in broad
daylight two men on a motorcycle attacked Maria, leaving her with a prominent
scar on her left hand. The two men on a motorcycle swung at them with what
Mahmoud described as “something white, maybe wood with nails” as
they yelled the word for ‘dirty’ (Βρωμιάρα).
Maria remembered,

I held my hand in front of my head when
something hit my hand. After that I held my hand, it was something very hard, I
didn’t know what it was but it seemed like a saw. My hand was hurt
severely here. It was injured so deeply that you could see the bone.[90]

Mahmoud
explained to us that he thinks the attackers were aiming at him, but hit Maria
when, out of instinct, he ducked.[91]

After the attack, Mahmoud and Maria ran away, and only went
to the hospital the following day. Maria told us they did not report the attack
to the police because “we had already heard that the police don’t
help us in situations like that.”[92] Mahmoud
said, “Go to the police? Is that a joke? If you go to the police they
tell you to go fight yourself.”[93]

Although better now, Maria was deeply shaken by the attack.
“I didn’t want to go out anymore, and my husband had to do all the
everyday errands and things I normally did… Now I try to dress more like
Greek women; I don’t want to draw any attention to myself.”[94]

III. Violence elsewhere in Greece

While xenophobic
violence appears to be most acute in and around Athens, media reports suggest
that anti-immigrant sentiment has led to violence in other parts of the
country. Human Rights Watch documented attacks in Aspropyrgos, a town roughly
20 kilometers north of Athens, as well as one attack in Corinth, roughly 80
kilometers southwest of the capital. Several incidents have reportedly taken
place on the island of Crete, although Human Rights Watch was not able to
independently investigate these incidents.

Aspropyrgos, September 2011

A spate of anti-immigrant attacks over a two-day period in
mid-September 2011 in Aspropyrgos left a number of Pakistani immigrants
injured. The police told a Pakistani community leader that the attacks were
triggered by allegations that a Pakistani man had harassed a Greek girl.[95]

It is unclear how many separate incidents occurred and how
many people were attacked. The grass-roots organization United Against
Racism and the Fascist Threat reported that 25 people were injured in a series
of attacks that included mob violence at a suburban train station, an assault
on a bus, and attacks in ten different homes, all on September 10, 2011.[96]

Asia Ilieva, whose testimony about an attack on her
Pakistani companion’s store is below, confirmed that mobs were
specifically targeting Pakistanis:

There was no house that they didn’t enter and beat
people. In all houses with Pakistanis, all the guys were beaten. Around 20 guys
were at the hospital that night. This started on Saturday [September 10]…
they [the attackers] were entering buses and they were beating people and were
making them get off. It started on Saturday and continued on Sunday all day
long.[97]

Forty-year-old Mahmoud S., a Pakistani national who
has been living legally in Greece for 14 years, told us ten hooded men, armed
with wooden and iron bars as well as screwdrivers, attacked his home in the
Goritsa neighborhood of Aspropyrgos on the night of September 11, 2011.
Mahmoud and his five roommates, also Pakistanis, had gone to bed for the night
when “they came, broke the door, and entered the house.”

They were shouting, “Μαλάκα,
το μάνα σου, το
σπίτι σου” [Asshole, fuck your
mother, fuck your house]… [T]hey had woods, their legs, irons... They
broke everything and beat my roommates and me... They beat me on the head and
chest and I was bleeding. I still have a hole in my head. They beat me with
iron. The attack lasted 20 minutes. The house had three rooms and two persons
were sleeping in each room. They went first to one room, then to other room and
that’s why it lasted 20 minutes. In total, they beat five guys as the
sixth guy was hidden in the toilet.[98]

All five were taken to a hospital in Magoula by
ambulance. Mahmoud required five or six stitches to his head, one of his
roommates required nine stitches and another suffered three broken ribs and
head injuries.[99] According
to Mahmoud, he called the police numerous times after the attack, “but
they didn’t come.” The police later interviewed him and his
roommates at the hospital, but he has no information about any investigation
into the attack.[100] He and
his roommates have since moved to another area of Aspropyrgos.

Javet Aslam, the president of an association of Pakistanis
living in Greece, witnessed an attack on one home late in the evening of
September 11. Earlier in the evening, he had met with the Aspropyrgos chief of
police and received his assurances that the police would act against the
violence, so when he received a call from someone saying his home was under attack
Aslam immediately called the police chief.

He said he didn’t have anyone to send. I insisted, I
said just sent one or two, and after an hour he sent two officers. I went
with them, there were a lot of people, and the police said they couldn’t
do anything…maybe because there were only two of them…and they
left. They left us there. There were around 30 people breaking things
inside the house. Around 11 p.m. Then the police took one injured person to the
hospital. Why didn’t the police prepare to respond better, given the
attacks the day before and the meetings of people to organize the attacks? How
could they [the police] not know this?[101]

According to Aslam, the Aspropyrgos police said these were
not racist attacks because they were sparked by accusations that a Pakistani man
had molested a Greek girl. “But I say if that happened, then that one
person is a criminal, not everybody,” Aslam said.[102]

Javet Ikbal and Asia Ilieva described
an attack on their store in the Goritsa neighborhood of Aspropyrgos around 10
p.m. on the night of September 11, 2011. Ikbal’s brother, Abit Housein,
32 years old, was in the store at the time and suffered head injuries. Ikbal, a
52-year-old originally from Pakistan who acquired Greek nationality, and Asia
Ilieva, his 56-year-old companion from Bulgaria, have owned the mini-market
since 2003; this is the first time they have experienced such an attack. Ilieva
explained,

We left [the store] to put gas [in the car]. We came back
and we stopped on the road because I cannot describe how many people were on
the street… We’re talking about 200-300 people… Tall kids,
beautiful, strong kids... They had nothing covered [i.e. their faces]. And they
were dressed with sport clothes. But they were holding wooden bats and had
stones. The store was full of stones [after the attack]. They also had hammers.
They didn’t have flags or anything.

I turned my head and I saw there was no light in our store.
We always leave a light on and it can be seen from outside because his
[Ikbal’s] brother sleeps there... We come here [to the store] and what do
we see? Nothing has been left in place. All the refrigerators were outside,
broken, there was fire... They did it in 15 minutes! And…there was a pool
of blood because they broke his [Ikbal’s] brother’s head. The
damage in money was 5,000 to 6,000 Euro (US$ 6,278 to 7,534). I threw
everything away. We didn’t have insurance in the store.[103]

Three police cars from the Aghios Anargyros police
station responded to Ikbal’s call and arrived on the scene minutes later.
The couple filed an official complaint, but has since heard no news about the
investigation. Ikbal complained that the authorities did nothing to prevent the
violence:

The police knew everything. They did nothing. No patrols,
nothing. The police usually patrols every day. For three days, we didn’t
see even one motorcycle, not even one car from the Aspropyrgos Police. But
it’s nobody’s fault, there is no law, there is no state, there is
no police, there is no logic.”[104]

Ikbal’s brother, who required stitches on
his head in three different places, relocated to Nikaia, a neighborhood on the
periphery of Athens and would later leave Greece. Ilieva explained, “we
didn’t let him stay here… we were afraid that they [the attackers]
would come back and kill him. And we, ourselves, for ten days, we left the
store in the situation it was.” She added that many of those who
experienced attacks in those days have left the area, while those who remain are
scared to go out after dark. As a precautionary measure, Ikbal and Ilieva have
removed the Urdu writing from their storefront.[105]

Corinth, February 2012

Two North Africans were seriously injured in an
attack near the abandoned train station where they live in Corinth on February
18, 2012. According to testimony Human Rights Watch gathered from Mostafa El
Mouzdahir, a Moroccan, and two witnesses, a group of seven Greek nationals came
to the train station around 3:30 p.m. claiming two migrants had stolen some
money. Hearing calls for help, El Mouzdahir and his friend Isham went outside
the wagon they live in and saw a group of men beating a migrant. As more and
more migrants arrived on the scene, the Greeks fled but a crowd gathered around
an attacker’s car. El Mouzdahir told us he tried to prevent a lynching,
but ended up a victim:

He got into his car. Some Algerians
followed him and tried to open his door, and I went there…to tell them to
stop. I told them to not hit him, to let him leave. And the Greek [man]
said thank you…. I speak a little bit of Greek so I…told him
‘no one will hit you, but close your door and leave and there’s no
problem’. When he closed his door, he saw people in front of his car. He became insane. He accelerated and hit Saïd the Algerian in the legs and then he went ahead for maybe 200 meters
and then accelerated again in reverse and hit me. There were a lot of us but I
didn’t manage to get away… I had a big hit on the head and
then I forgot everything. My feet, my back, my jaw, my head are still hurting.[106]

El Mouzdahir’s friend Isham, as well as two
foreign journalists (a Spanish reporter and an Italian news photographer),
witnessed the attack.

After the car sped away, the police came quickly
and took the journalists, though none of the migrants, to the police station to
take their statements. Isham explained that an ambulance came for El Mouzdahir
and Saïd much later: “Imagine! We are a five minute walk away [from
the hospital] and it took one hour for the ambulance to come. They transferred
two persons in the same ambulance. ”[107]

El Mouzdahir and Saïd were hospitalized for
five and four days, respectively. El Mouzdahir told Human Rights Watch the
police guarded his door the first night, and returned twice to take his
statement. He believes it was the police chief who questioned him.

He told me about the press. He said, ‘Because of you
and the press, we have a big problem with many countries.’ I didn’t
say anything… After that he told me ‘Now I'll give you the Χαρτί
[order to leave Greece within 30 days] and I wish you good health. When you get
out of here, no police officer will bother you in the street.’ The Police
was kind because they heard that photos of me were seen in Spain, Italy,
everywhere"[108]

The driver of the car turned himself into the
police on February 20, two days after the attack. Panos Damelos, an anti-racism
activist in Corinth following the case, said the police had told him that they
did not consider the attack to be racially-motivated, but rather the actions of
a man with psychological problems. The police, according to Damelos, refused to
investigate the car incident in relation to the group attack on migrants in the
abandoned train station. None of the undocumented migrants wanted to file an
official complaint, and the police argued they had no obligation to investigate
ex officio; none of the other assailants have been identified.[109]

El Mouzdahir and Isham told Human Rights Watch
this was the second attack they experienced. A large group of young men with
motorcycles and on foot attacked the train station near the end of November
2011. They said that at around midnight, a friend of theirs who was outside
talking on the phone saw a group of some fifty people begin throwing stones. He
rushed inside the train wagon where El Mouzdahir and Isham were and closed the
door. El Mouzdahir remembered the volley of stones was “like rain.”
He and Isham, interviewed separately, both complained that the police
“don’t care” that a group of seven or eight people gather
regularly in a nearby park with their dogs and harass migrants. They believed
these young men could have been involved in the stone attack. Isham
explained that two young police officers arrived on the scene shortly after the
incident: “We told them it was the racists and then they left. They don’t care. They didn’t come back to ask us
questions or anything.”[110]

Crete, 2011

An Albanian national was hospitalized on May 13, 2011,
in Rethymno, on the Greek island of Crete, after suffering multiple injuries in
an attack by a group of Greeks.[111]
Another Albanian suffered minor injuries in the same attack. Police were
reportedly investigating whether the attack was racially-motivated and related
to the incidents in Athens only a few days before.[112]
On September 11, 2011, police in Lasithi arrested four young men and one
16-year-old boy in connection with the violent beating of a Mauritian immigrant
the day before.[113]

On November 19, 2011, three Pakistanis were
hospitalized after being attacked in their home in Perama-Mylopotamos in what
police are investigating as retaliation after an elderly woman was beaten and
strangled to death in a robbery allegedly committed by two Afghan migrants.[114]A
few hours later, a car owned by a Pakistani national was engulfed in flames in
the same area.[115]

Patras May 2011 and May 2012

In Patras, on May 7, 2011, a few days before the
violence in Athens, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into an abandoned house occupied
by four homeless Romanians. The newspaper Eleftherotypia reported that
the police carried out investigations to identify the perpetrator and were
considering the possibility that the attack was racially motivated.[116]The
Patras prosecutor replied to a detailed query from Human Rights Watch about
this case stating simply that the case is still under investigation, with
unknown perpetrators sought on charges of arson posing a risk to human life.[117]

On May 19, 2012, in Patras a 30-year-old Greek man was
fatally stabbed by three men believed to be Afghan nationals. According to news
articles, police arrested one Afghan man and are looking for two others in
connection with the murder.[118] In the
days following the murder, large and violent anti-immigrant protests took place
in front of an abandoned factory occupied by hundreds of migrants. On May 23,
2012, around 350 people described by the police as “mainly members of
Golden Dawn” participated in an anti-immigrant demonstration that led to
clashes with the police.[119]
According to a police statement, eight officers were injured and hospitalized,
and a bus patrol car and two motorcycles were damaged. Officers brought 22
people in for questioning and arrested five of them.

In a call to end the violence in Patras, UNHCR stressed that
“the anger generated by the murder, for which a criminal investigation is
on-going, should not lead to a cycle of violence, with civilians taking the law
into their own hands. It can also not serve as an excuse to target and
victimize migrants and refugees in Patras or other regions of Greece.”[120]

Human Rights Watch
sent letters on April 12, 2012, to the Prosecutor’s Office of Corinth and
on April 21, 2012, to the Prosecutor’s Offices of Lasithi and Rethymno in
Crete inquiring about these incidents. The letter to the Corinth office was
returned unread on May 25, 2012 and was resent on June 6, 2012. At the time of
writing, we had not received an answer to any of the letters.

IV. Greece’s Legal Obligations

Greece is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) , which requires all state parties to ensure to all
persons their fundamental rights without distinction of any kind, including
race, language, religion, national origin, or other status.[121]
The Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the ICCPR, has made
clear that states have a positive obligation to prevent and punish human rights
abuse by private actors.[122] Greece
is also a party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) which obligates states to guarantee everyone
“without distinction as to race, color, or national or ethnic
origin…security of person and protection by the State against violence or
bodily harm, whether inflicted by government officials or by any individual,
group or institution.”[123]

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), ratified by
Greece in 1974, provides for the equal enjoyment of all Convention rights
without distinctions based on race, color, religion, or national or social
origin, among other grounds.[124] The
Convention also imposes positive obligations on states to protect individuals
from attack, assault, or injury by private individuals, in particular when
combined with protection of the rights to life and bodily integrity.[125]

The European Court of Human Rights has established in its
case law the duty of states to investigate whether a criminal offense was
motivated by racist animus. In its 2005 ruling in the case of Nachova and
Others v. Bulgaria, the Court argued:

When investigating violent incidents … State
authorities have the additional duty to take all reasonable steps to unmask any
racist motive and to establish whether or not ethnic hatred or prejudice may
have helped play a role in the events. Failing to do so and treating racially
induced violence and brutality on an equal footing with cases that do not have
racist overtones would be to turn a blind eye to the specific nature of acts
that are particularly destructive of fundamental rights.[126]

The court has reiterated the positive
obligation to investigate possible racist motivations in many successive cases.[127]
In relation to lethal attacks the court has emphasized that,

[W]here that attack is racially motivated, it is
particularly important that the investigation is pursued with vigour and
impartiality, having regard to the need to reassert continuously society's
condemnation of racism and to maintain the confidence of minorities in the
ability of the authorities to protect them from the threat of racist violence.[128]

The European Union Council
Framework Decision on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and
xenophobia by means of criminal law, adopted in November 2008, underlines the
obligation of EU states to ensure that racism and xenophobia are punishable by
“effective, proportionate and dissuasive” criminal
penalties.”[129] A binding legal instrument, the framework decision
establishes an obligation to ensure that racist and xenophobic motivation is
established under national law as an aggravating circumstance in the commission
of crimes or subject to penalty enhancement.[130]

As a member of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Greece is also
bound by the 2009 Ministerial Council decision on “Combating Hate
Crimes,” calling on states to take measures to address the problem,
including collecting reliable data, tailoring appropriate legislation,
assisting victims, and raising awareness.[131]

International and national human rights bodies have
expressed concern about Greece’s failure to live up to these obligations.
In June 2012, the UN Committee against Torture said Greece should
“strongly combat the increasing manifestations of racial discrimination,
xenophobia and related violence, including by publicly condemning all such
intolerance and motivated violence and sending a clear and unambiguous message
that racist or discriminatory acts, including by police and other public
officials, are unacceptable, and by prosecuting and punishing the perpetrators
of such acts.”[132]

In 2009, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination had expressed its concern that Greece was not acting diligently
to address racially motivated crimes, and urged Greek authorities to
“ensure the effective implementation of all legal provisions aimed at eliminating
racial discrimination and that racially motivated crimes are effectively
prosecuted and punished.”[133] Also
in 2009, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) urged
Greek authorities to ensure appropriate and ongoing training for judges and
prosecutors on “legislation against racism in general, and in particular
the new ones which provide for the racist motivation of a crime to be
considered an aggravating circumstance at sentencing.”[134]
This provision is discussed in more detail below.

During Greece’s Universal Periodic Review at the UN
Human Rights Council, in May 2011, numerous countries raised concerns about
discrimination and intolerance, including racist violence, and made a series of
recommendations, including through ensuring that racially motivated crimes are
effectively prosecuted and punished.[135] Greece
accepted these recommendations.

In June 2011, the Greek National Human Rights Commission, an
independent government advisory body, expressed its concern about rising racist
and xenophobic violence and issued a series of recommendations including
improved training of police and the judiciary on racist crimes; the
introduction of specific guidelines on investigations of racist crimes and a
mandatory registration system using a special form; the creation of liaison
police officers and teams specialized in racist crimes; improving
police-community relations; and the establishment of a centralized recording
system to improve data collection and analysis of racist crimes.[136]

Greece should publicly and unequivocally
condemn racist and xenophobic violence, and act on its obligations under
international human rights law to undertake effective measures to prevent such
violence and to investigate and prosecute perpetrators. These obligations apply
whether the perpetrators of the violence are agents of the state or private
actors.

V. State Response

Right now the fear is that the state cannot protect us. If
the government does not intervene, things will get much worse.

—Ali Rahimi, Afghan asylum seeker, Athens, December
5, 2011

The cases documented in this report demonstrate that
migrants and asylum seekers have little chance of seeing justice done. Victims
of violent racist and xenophobic attacks in Athens face countless obstacles in
reporting crimes and activating police investigations. Undocumented
migrants face the threat of detention and deportation if they report a crime. The
authorities have thus far failed to aggressively prosecute racist and xenophobic
violence for what it is. National authorities—as well as the EU and the
international community at large—preoccupied by the economic crisis and
concerned with control of irregular immigration, have largely turned a blind
eye.

Ministry of Citizen Protection officials and prosecutors
alike pointed to low numbers of complaints and cases in court as proof that
racist and xenophobic violence is not a serious or growing problem.[137]
This analysis ignores underreporting by victims who lack confidence in the
police response, or, if they are undocumented migrants, fear detention if they
come forward. Above all it ignores the inadequate response of the police and
justice system to such attacks.

Inadequate Police Response

Human Rights Watch documented serious failings in police
response to incidents and reports of violence against migrants and asylum
seekers. Despite Ministry of Citizen Protection circulars, amendments to the
Police Code of Ethics, and training courses on human rights issues, the police
appear ill-equipped or ill-disposed to investigate reports of racist violence.

Brigadier Georgios Nitsas at the Ministry of Citizen
Protection insisted that all cases are diligently investigated:

When we have complaints by migrants, we try to systematize
and treat them with sensitivity. We investigate. To date, we have seen
individual cases and have not uncovered racist motives. But when there are
fights between Greeks and migrants, there is systematic investigation of racist
motive… It’s not easy.[138]

In theory, appropriate legal tools and police guidelines are
in place. In keeping with the EU Council
Framework Decision on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and
xenophobia by means of criminal law, Greece amended its criminal code in 2008
to make racist motivation an aggravating circumstance. A 2006
Ministry of Citizen Protection circular to the Hellenic Police force entitled
“Addressing racism, xenophobia, bigotry and intolerance through police
actions” requires the police to investigate possible racist motive in the
commission of a crime when invoked by victims or witnesses, when this
interpretation is substantiated by evidence, when admitted by the
perpetrator(s), or when the alleged perpetrator(s) and victim(s) of the crime
self-identify or belong to different racial, religious or social groups.[139]

Human rights courses, including on racism and xenophobia,
are part of the training curriculum for police officers. Outside teachers,
usually university professors, are brought in to teach these classes.[140]
Anastassia Tsoukala, a scholar and advisor to the Ministry of Citizen
Protection on training, said there is awareness that prejudice within the police
force remains a problem. “The courses are there, the teachers are okay,
and so what isn’t working? Police live in a conservative xenophobic
society…and [they] mirror broader societal biases,” she said.[141]
A police officer we interviewed on condition of anonymity complained that the
courses did not teach concrete techniques for investigating hate crimes. He said,
“I would like to learn about human rights in seminars, and in practice.
Someone to tell us one, two, three things we have to do. I want him to tell me
practical things. The professors are used to a university audience. We are
bored in the first three minutes.”[142]

There are no designated officers or divisions specialized in
responding to and investigating hate crimes, including racist violence. The
police do have special operations related to other types of crime, such as
illegal trade and robberies on public transportation.[143]

Police officers in central Athens face numerous challenges
and threats in the course of their duties, all of which are exacerbated by the
financial crisis and lack of sufficient human and material resources. Ioannis
Makris, president of the Athens police union, complained in May 2011 that only
one third of police vehicles were in operation and available for patrols due to
lack of money. “From boots to bulletproof vests, police resources are
ailing in Athens,” he said.[144] The
police officer we interviewed on condition of anonymity, who served for two
years in a central Athens police station, complained that “there is no
money for even the simplest things. At one point we didn’t have paper to
send a message asking for paper.”[145]

In spite of such challenges almost all of the victims Human
Rights Watch interviewed who had had some kind of contact with the police
in the aftermath of an attack said they received some kind of immediate
assistance, in particular the securing of medical attention.

However, underreporting of violence is a significant problem. Many undocumented
victims we interviewed said they did not seek assistance from the police for
fear of being detained and deported. Other undocumented migrants who had never
approached the police cited the experience of friends who tried to report
crimes and had been turned away or ill-treated. Finally, many cited prior
negative personal experiences with the police as the reason for their lack of
faith in the institution. As Marianna Tzefarakou of the Greek Council for
Refugees explained, “Even those with papers are afraid or unwilling to go
to the police. In some cases, they’ve gone and the police told them
to go away. So they have no faith.”[146]

Yet those who do report incidents to the police, either as a
result of a chance encounter immediately following an attack or due to a
conscious effort to file an official complaint, paint an overall picture of
police inaction or indifference in stark contrast to government reassurances. The
police only act if the victim files an official complaint, even if police have
responded to the scene of an attack. Undocumented migrants interviewed by Human
Rights Watch were routinely discouraged from filing official complaints. The
police told some victims they would have to pay a fee to file a complaint.
Finally, police investigations of complaints that are filed are
inadequate.

Seven victims we interviewed said the police told them to
fight back themselves. Ali Mohammadi, a 25-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, for
example, said when he filed a complaint after an attack, a police officer asked
him why he had not fought back. “I told him, my friend, if I wanted to
hit someone, I wouldn’t have left my country. I came to live like a human
being.”[147]

Failure to prevent attacks

The police have a paramount duty to prevent crime, especially
violent crime. There is however little evidence that police are pursuing a
strategy to prevent violent attacks on migrants, despite repeated attacks in
certain areas of the city, notably Aghios Panteleimonas, and a pattern of
intense retaliatory violence in the wake of crimes attributed to migrants (the
May 2011 wave of attacks in central Athens and the September 2011 violence in
Aspropyrgos, for example).

Safar Haidari, whose December 2011 attack is described
above, blamed the rise in attacks on the failure of the authorities to address
the violence,

In the neighborhoods of Aghios Panteleimonas and Attiki
there are a lot of people coming from everywhere. And that’s why
the Greeks do not want so many people in the neighborhood. Occasionally
they are right but I think it’s the fault of the state. The state
should do something… [These are] organized groups. They have sticks in
their hands, helmets on their heads, and go in groups of 10-12 persons in one
neighborhood. They are organized. This happens very often in Aghios
Panteleimonas. Now, at night, I cannot go to the office because I am
scared.[148]

A senior official in the Ministry of Citizen Protection
assured Human Rights Watch that the 2010-2014 police operational plan to combat
crime included attention to racist crime, though the only reference Human
Rights Watch could identify on the face of the plan was a commitment to
cooperate with local authorities to “develop common collective actions
for the security” of vulnerable groups, including “groups with
cultural difference.”[149] There
is significant police presence in central Athens, yet this does not appear to
be linked to any strategic deployment as part of a preventative approach to racist
violence.

While there are undoubtedly challenges in
investigating crimes with masked perpetrators, who the victims are unable to
identify, the failure to take preventive action in areas of repeated violence
makes this justification ring hollow, since preventive deployments would be an
efficient policing tool that would increase the likelihood that police officers
would themselves witness attacks and could catch perpetrators red-handed.

Moreover, it is striking that although the media, average
citizens, NGO observers and even government officials explicitly link attacks
on migrants to the so-called “citizens’ groups” and/or
members of Golden Dawn, the police do not appear to have any strategy for
monitoring the activities of these groups with a view to preventing attacks.

Discouraging complaints by undocumented migrants

The police do everything backwards. First, they ask for
[your] papers.

—Mohammad Nadeem, Pakistani, Athens, December 7, 2011

Police behavior towards undocumented migrants who
are the victims of racist attacks nurtures the lack of faith in the authorities
and fear of arrest and deportation that deter so many others from even
considering seeking assistance from law enforcement agencies. Hassan
Mohammed was told bluntly at the Aghios Panteleimonas police station that he
would be arrested if he tried to file an official complaint. He had been
assisted by the police right after he was assaulted by a large group of people,
leaving him bleeding and unconscious on the street, on October 29, 2011. He
went to the police station after receiving medical treatment but was turned
away:

I told them, I am the one you took from the street, this is
the paper with everything: blood test, scan, x-rays. I had a broken bone under
the right eye. I showed them [the police]. They asked me for my papers. I
am illegal, and they said we have to put you in prison. I was wounded. I just
gave up.[150]

Kazim G.’s experience is also
representative. A 17-year-old Afghan, Kazim G. was attacked in September 2011
near Victoria Square by a large group of people who hit him with a bottle and
beat his body and legs with a hard implement. He told us that “when the
police saw that my order to leave Greece had expired four days before, they
said ‘we cannot do anything for you because you are illegal here. So you
can just go beat them back.’ I was bleeding from the head from the
bottle, and my arm was hurt but…they didn’t help me.”[151]

Jawed Haidari, a19-year-old undocumented Afghan, had a
similar experience. He happened upon three police officers as he staggered home
after being beaten and kicked by a group of four or five people late at night
on January 8, 2011, on Michaïl Voda Street. After ascertaining that
Haidari did not have legal papers, the officers took him to the Aghios
Panteleimonas Square and left him there. Haidari didn’t understand why
they had accompanied him to the square. “I don’t know,” he
told us. “I explained what happened…but they didn’t pay
attention. They just asked for my papers.”[152]

In another case Human Rights Watch documented, the
police encouraged 26-year-old Pakistani Asif Ali to accept an apology after he
was attacked along with a friend while at a bus stop in the Rendi neighborhood
of Athens in August 2011. The police responded to a call from witnesses and
apprehended the assailants. According to Ali, the officers said he could only
file a complaint if he had legal papers, and that it would be better for
everyone for them to say sorry “and it ends here.”

The guys said sorry. I accepted the apology. I don’t
want troubles. This is my second country. I wanted to file a complaint but the
problem is I don’t have papers. If I file a complaint, I go to jail and
they don’t go. Tomorrow they will let them go and they will keep me in
the police station.[153]

Indeed, the majority of
undocumented migrants we interviewed did not report an attack to the police.
Deeqa Ibrahim, a 19-year-old Somali, explained she did not go to the police
“because lots of people get attacked and the police take them to the
hospital and then don’t do anything. And they would ask for my papers and
put me in jail… The Greek government doesn’t do anything. We are
looking for respect. We are looking for a safe place. If I’d
known this would happen, I would have stayed in Somalia.”[154]
Ibrahim had been attacked one night in October 2011 near Victoria Square by
five men who hit her with a bottle. When we asked Saleh Ibrahim, another Somali
(unrelated), if he had gone to the police after he was attacked he replied,
“Of course not! Because if I go to the police I will bring a lot of
problems to myself.”[155] Juma
Rizzaie, a 26-year-old Afghan said he didn’t bother reporting his
December 2011 attack “because this kind of thing happens many times and
the police just tell people to go and do the same thing back, so I know they
won’t do anything.”[156]

Human Rights Watch
did not hear of any cases in which an undocumented migrant was detained
following an attempt to report a crime for the sole reason of being in Greece
without legal papers. Yet interviews with one police officer and prosecutors
suggested this was a real possibility. The anonymous police officer we
interviewed asserted plainly, “If someone comes and doesn’t have
papers, I cannot let him go.”[157] A
senior prosecutor in Patras argued that the law requires that an undocumented
victim of a crime be detained and deported.[158]

First Instance Deputy Prosecutor in Athens George Kaloudis
insisted that undocumented migrants who are the victims of crimes would not be
penalized. Acknowledging that in most cases, “if the victim doesn’t
have papers, the police just tell them to go away,” Kaloudis said the
police are obligated to accept an official complaint from an undocumented
migrant while at the same time looking into the legal status of the
victim. Victims who are already subject to a deportation order can ask
for a delay in deportations.[159]

Insistence on a fee to file a complaint

Human Rights Watch knows of three cases in which victims
were told they had to pay a fee to file an official complaint. In late 2010, Greece introduced a 100 Euro (US$ 125)
fee to file police complaints. Yiannis Ioannidis, state secretary for
transparency and human rights at the Ministry of Justice, explained that the
fee is designed to discourage frivolous complaints that clog a chronically slow
system of justice.[160]

The Greek Code of Criminal
Procedure distinguishes between crimes that the state is obligated to prosecute
and those in which state action is only triggered by an official victim
complaint.[161] The general rule is that when a crime is reported it
requires mandatory state action, but if an offense is deemed to cause a limited
harm to an individual (rather than a fundamental interest of the state), it
will normally require a victim’s complaint for prosecution to go forward.
Many serious felonies—punishable by prison terms between five years and
life—give rise to mandatory state action, while many misdemeanor
offenses—punishable by prison terms up to five years—do not. For
example, under Greek law serious bodily harm and simple bodily harm are both
misdemeanor offenses; the former gives rise to mandatory state action while the
latter requires an official complaint from the victim to trigger prosecution.
Similarly, damage to property is a misdemeanor offense requiring an official
victim complaint.

It is our understanding that
the prosecutor’s office can exercise its ex officio powers to open a
prosecution on the basis of direct reports from the police or the victim, media
or other sources, and upon receipt of an official complaint. The police are
under an obligation to report to the prosecutor’s office, even in the
absence of an official victim’s complaint, any crime they learn about
that gives rise to mandatory state action. This means that the police should
alert the prosecutor’s office if the victim of an attack causing serious
bodily harm tells them of the attack, even when the report is made informally
on the street or at the police station.

However, even when the crime falls
into the category that requires mandatory state action, if the prosecutor is
informed by an official complaint to the police, the person making the complaint
is required to pay the fee.[162] Nonetheless, senior prosecutors in the Athens
prosecutors office told Human Rights Watch that the fee only applied to crimes
where the state does not have the obligation to prosecute ex officio, and that
in cases of doubt or dispute the prosecutor would decide whether the fee is
applicable or not.[163]

Officials in the judiciary
and the Ministry of Justice assured Human Rights Watch that crimes where racist
motivation is suspected would be prosecuted ex officio.[164] The Code of Criminal Procedure does not, however,
explicitly state that all offenses aggravated by racist motivation give rise to
mandatory prosecution regardless of the nature of the offense.[165]

The officer we interviewed on condition of anonymity said
that in practice he feels obligated to ask all victims to pay.

The theory is good. But in practice, if 20 people come to
file a complaint against unknown perpetrators, it is a time-consuming
procedure, ten services are occupied with a complaint that has no sense, as
it’s against unknown perpetrators and you will never find them. You will
send it to the prosecutor, he will put the complaint in a drawer … they
will look at it, they will see the 100 Euros weren’t paid, they
will say it’s invalid and bye-bye.[166]

A different police officer said virtually the same thing
when a Human Rights Watch researcher assisted Razia Sharife, a victim of an
attack whose case is detailed above, in filing a complaint. The officer said
the police were under orders not to accept complaints without payment of the
fee, and warned that prosecutors “immediately archive” such
complaints.[167] He did
ultimately accept Sharife’s complaint without the fee.

Adams Ziad, a 39-year-old Sudanese who has lived in Greece
since 2004, did pay the fee, however, to report his assault by a group of five
people in September 2011. The other challenges he faced in filing the complaint
are detailed below. In the third case we heard about, the victim decided not to
pursue filing a complaint precisely because the police told him it would cost
100 Euros.

Mokhtar Azizi, a 25-year-old
Iranian Kurd, is an asylum seeker who has been living in Greece since
2009. He was assaulted by three men near Omonia Square on April 4,
2011. After they kicked and punched him, he managed to catch one of them
while the other two escaped. According to Azizi, three police officers who
arrived on the scene tried to mediate:

The police asked him [the assailant] to say that he will
not hit migrants and refugees any more. The attacker apologized for what he did
and said he wouldn’t do it again and the police said, ok, you can go. But
I didn’t want an apology to the police; they didn’t ask me if I
wanted to forgive him.[168]

The police ended up taking
both Azizi and the alleged attacker to the Omonia police station, where he was
told he would need to pay 100 Euros to file an official complaint. Although he
asked, he was not allowed to call the NGO Doctors of the World, or a lawyer. He
told us the police threatened to detain him if he attempted to speak on the
phone. Without the money to pay, Azizi gave up.

Inadequate response and investigations

Human Rights Watch spoke with 37 victims of attacks
who said they had had some kind of contact with the police in the immediate
aftermath of an attack. Only seven of these then tried to file an official
complaint, and only five were successful. None of them has seen any progress in
the case or indeed been contacted again by the police as part of the
investigation.

There are of course real obstacles to
investigating cases where the victim cannot identify the attackers or provide
detailed descriptions. Talking about a hypothetical situation involving an
attack by ten persons whom the victim cannot identity, the anonymous police
officer cited above said, “So we send a signal to all the services to
“search for ten people” and then nothing will happen. The complaint
will be archived.”[169]

Nonetheless, the apparent consistent failure of
the police to attempt any kind of diligent investigation suggests a pattern of
indifference, at best, and negligence at worst. While the police secured an
ambulance for a victim in a number of incidents we documented, in only a handful
of cases did the police then go to the hospital to conduct a detailed interview
with the victim right after an attack. After the police responded to an attack
on two Egyptians and one Palestinian on May 8, 2012, in the Kallithea
neighborhood, and all three were transferred to the hospital, the police only
went to interview one of them.[170] In
Sharife’s case, detailed above, the police never interviewed witnesses of
the multiple attacks on her apartment.

Qadir Hossaini, the 33-year-old Afghan interpreter for the
NGO Doctors of the World spent a week in the hospital and had to have stitches
near his right eye following an attack on September 15, 2010, near the Aghios
Panteleimonas church by what witnesses claimed was a group of 25 people. Though
he doesn’t remember, Hossaini managed to drag himself to the nearby
police station, where officers called for an ambulance. Hossaini told Human
Rights Watch:

The police didn’t ask me anything then [that day] but
three days later after they saw me on TV, two officers from the central police
station came to take my statement. I gave them the names of my friends but the
police never contacted them. After about two months they called me to the
central police station and asked me about the police behavior. Since then, I
haven’t had any contact at all with the police. When they came to the
hospital, they asked if I wanted to file a complaint but I said I
wouldn’t recognize them [the attackers]. The place where they beat me was
very dark. I remember only that they were young, maybe 17 or 18, and all boys.[171]

In some cases, victims described the failure of the police
to respond appropriately on the scene even when the alleged attackers were
still present. Adams Ziad, mentioned above, was assaulted by a group of four
men and one woman around 9 a.m. on September 12, 2011, in the Kallithea
neighborhood of Athens, while on his way to work. They shouted insults, beat
him on the face and head, and destroyed his belongings.[172]

Ziad managed to escape and found four police officers not
far away. He told them what had happened, and also gave them a description of
the car the assailants had along with part of the license plate number. While
he was talking with the officers, the attackers returned to the scene of the
attack. Although one of the officers was apparently willing to go with Ziad to
approach the alleged attackers, his colleagues stopped them and insisted that
Ziad had to go the local police station to file a report. They did, however,
take Ziad’s pink card (proof of his status as an asylum seeker), which he
later collected at the Kallithea police station.

Ziad faced further difficulties in reporting the crime. The
police at the Kallithea station told him they could not process the complaint
without a report from the officers at the scene; Ziad had to go the central
Athens police station to obtain a copy. He returned to the Kallithea station
the next day, September 13, with the tiny piece of paper he had received as
proof of the request submitted at the central station. Ziad said he ultimately
refused to sign the report the officer drew up that day because it contained
errors. He sought help from a lawyer to draft his own report of the event,
which he was able to file on September 14. As noted above, however, he had to
pay a 100 Euro (US$ 125) fee. Only upon filing the complaint did Ziad receive a
paper to go see a forensic doctor for an examination, two days after the
attack. As of the beginning of May 2012, Ziad had not heard anything from the
police about the investigation.[173]

Cidiki Kaba, a thirty-six-year-old Senegalese asylum seeker,
was attacked on November 26, 2011 in the Aghioi Anarguroi neighborhood of
central Athens, around 9 p.m. by one man and two older children. The man hit
and kicked him, and then took out a knife. Residents in the area came to
Kaba’s aid, caught the two younger assailants, and called the police. The
man escaped.[174]

The police took Kaba and the two older children to the
police station in Ilion/Aghioi Anarguroi, where there was apparently a big
discussion about whether to officially record the incident. “One of the
officers said it wasn’t worth it, that they [the two apprehended assailants]
were minors and the other got away, but they argued about it and then asked
their superior who said that once there is a knife involved they need to do a
report.”[175]

Human Rights Watch
requested information about this case in a letter to the Athens prosecutor and
the Ministry of Citizen Protection on April 4, 2012. At the time of writing, we
had not received an answer.

Baktiar Mohammadi was so frustrated by police
treatment that he filed an official complaint with the Athens
prosecutor’s office. A 23-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who has been in
Greece for six years, Mohammadi was attacked on August 6, 2009, in front of the
Aghios Panteleimonas church. A group of ten people assaulted him after he
refused to change course when a man told him as a Muslim he couldn’t
cross in front of the church “They hit me on the face, the head, the
lips. I had blood [on my face],” Mohammadi said.[176]

And then I don’t know, I was lying on the ground for
thirty minutes and I don’t know where I am. And then slowly, slowly I
went to the Police near here [Aghios Panteleimonas station], I told them,
“Ten persons beat me in front of the church, can you help me?” and
they say, ‘No go first to the doctor and then come here,’ and I
said, ‘How can I go, I came here on my four legs like an animal. How can
I go to the doctor?’ They said, ‘Take a taxi’. I called a
friend and told him to come and take me to the hospital. My friend came and we
went to the hospital until four in the morning [from 9 p.m.], then we came back
to the police… They told me, ‘What are you doing here? Go and come
back at noon.’ I left and I went back at noon and they tell me, ‘Now
it’s the lunch, we have to eat, come back in the afternoon.’ I went
home and I went back [to the station] in the afternoon they told me that the
supervisor is not here and then I said, ‘Are you making fun of me? What
are you doing?’[177]

After receiving advice from the
Greek Council for Refugees, Mohammadi filed a complaint directly with the
Athens prosecutor’s office about the attack and against the police for
breach of their duties. Over two years later, Mohammadi received a letter from
the prosecutor’s office, dated November 24, 2011, informing him that
there was insufficient evidence to substantiate a claim of police negligence,
but that the case of injuries caused by unknown perpetrators remained under
investigation.[178] A
Human Rights Watch letter to the Athens prosecutor’s office dated April
4, 2012 inquiring about developments in this case remained unanswered at this
writing.

Failure to Prosecute Attacks as Hate Crimes

The failure of the police to record and take crucial initial
steps to investigate violent attacks on migrants and asylum seekers means few
cases reach the criminal justice system. Human Rights Watch is aware of only
one significant case, detailed below, of an Afghan asylum seeker who was
stabbed during a mob attack in September 2011. While prosecutors interviewed by
Human Rights Watch insisted that victims can apply directly to the
prosecutor’s office, instead of lodging a complaint with the police, most
people will not do this either because they are unaware that it is an option or
because it may appear too complicated to submit a written document to the
prosecutor’s office.

The justice system appears ill-prepared to address
effectively those cases that do get reported. A 2008 provision in the Greek
Criminal Code creating the aggravating circumstance of racist motivation has to
date never been applied. Prosecutors and judges receive no specialized
training, and there are no dedicated prosecutors for racist and xenophobic crimes.
Recent positive steps, including a request from the Ministry of Justice that
guidelines be circulated to all prosecutors with respect to racist and
xenophobic violence, suggest that the phenomenon of racist violence is
beginning to receive attention.

Criminal prosecutors in Greece have the duty to act, either
ex officio or upon receipt of an official complaint by a victim, to oversee
police investigations and prosecute, if warranted by the evidence, all criminal
acts. As noted above, the type of crime determines whether the prosecutor is
obligated to pursue the case even in the absence of a formal victim complaint.
While prosecutors are formally tasked with pursuing the truth and pressing
criminal charges where appropriate,[179] in
practice victims hire lawyers to support their cases at trial. Christos
Rozakis, the former vice-president of the European Court of Human Rights,
explained that any limitations on the role of the prosecutor at trial is
practical rather than institutional, citing lack of time or will.[180]
According to Athens Deputy Prosecutor Kaloudis, the key role for the prosecutor
comes at the sentencing stage, when he or she will help identify motives that
will influence the judge’s decision.[181]

Most files will be handled by a number of different
prosecutors throughout the judicial process, with the first prosecutor
overseeing the initial investigatory phase, a second prosecutor determining
whether to open a prosecution, and a third prosecutor appearing at trial. Every
month prosecutors are assigned specific days in the following month when they
are “on call” to appear in court; they can access the files of the
cases they will act on in court in a timely fashion. Dimitris Zimianitis, a
senior Athens prosecutor explained that the overwhelming number of cases per
year—300,000 for only 120 prosecutors—makes it impracticable for prosecutors
to be assigned files permanently.[182] Rozakis
argued that this lack of continuity did not pose a serious problem, and rather
may impose on prosecutors the discipline to ensure case files are well-enough
assembled to allow others to pick them up.[183]

However, the lack of continuity raises concerns about the
quality of the prosecution in complex cases, including ones involving alleged
racist motivation, which must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. While
there are specialized prosecutors for crimes such as domestic violence,
organized crime, and drug trafficking, no such pools of expertise exist for
racist and xenophobic crimes. Zimianitis, who is also the government’s
liaison with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office
for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, advocated the appointment of one
prosecutor in the Athens office who could serve as an expert resource on such
crimes for colleagues.[184]

As noted above, Greece amended its Criminal Code in 2008 to
introduce “national, racial, religious hatred” as well as
“hatred due to different sexual orientation” as an aggravating
circumstance in the commission of a crime.[185] Following
the general principle in Greek criminal law, a finding of an aggravating
circumstance gives the sentencing judge the discretion to apply the maximum
penalty for the crime.

To our knowledge, this aggravating circumstance has not once
been applied in the almost four years since its introduction. We spoke with
eight senior prosecutors and one official in the Ministry of Justice and none
could cite any cases.

A draft law tabled in December 2011 would modify this
provision to read: “The perpetration of the act due to hatred against a
group or person, identified on the basis of race, color, religion, descent,
national or ethnic origin or sexual orientation constitutes an aggravating
circumstance.”[186] The
bill, whose main provisions improve on and toughen criminal sanctions for
dissemination of racist material and incitement to hatred, was withdrawn in
mid-January 2012 as it was about to be debated in plenary session, apparently
due to objections related to a rider amendment unrelated to the bill’s
central issues.[187]

Acknowledging the failure to effectively apply the existing
provision, Yiannis Ioannidis, state secretary for transparency and human rights
at the Ministry of Justice, said the draft law should help by “improving
the provision in the criminal code and serve a pedagogical purpose.”[188]

Zimianitis indicated to Human Rights Watch there were
discussions about improving further on the draft law before resubmission to
parliament. Notably, he advocated for including the aggravating circumstance of
racist motivation in specific articles of the criminal code typifying certain
crimes, such as bodily harm and property damage. This approach, he argued,
would make the provision far more visible and accessible to prosecutors, making
its implementation more likely.[189]

In a positive step, Ioannidis wrote a letter in April 2012
to the Greek Attorney General asking him to develop and circulate guidelines to
prosecutors with respect to diligent investigation and prosecution of all
reports of possible racist or xenophobic crimes.[190]
At this writing, to our knowledge these guidelines had not yet been circulated.

Ali Rahimi: Waiting for Justice

Ali Rahimi’s search for
justice illustrates the vagaries of police behavior and the criminal justice
system in Greece. At this writing, the trial of two men and one woman for the
September 2011 attack on Rahimi and two of his friends, in which he was
stabbed five times in the torso with what he thinks was a knife, had been
postponed six times. The trial is now scheduled to take place in September
2012. It remains unclear whether the prosecutor will argue the attack had
been motivated by racist or xenophobic sentiment. The three defendants
are charged with serious bodily harm, a misdemeanor offense punishable by a
minimum of three months to a maximum of five years in prison.

Twenty-seven-year-old Rahimi was
waiting in front of a building in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood with
Reza Mohammed and Mohammadi Mohammad Ali, two fellow Afghans, around 9 p.m.
on September 16, 2011, when they were approached by a group of fifteen
people. After asking them where they were from, the group “began
to swear at us, telling us we are dirty, to leave the country, and suddenly
they started attacking us.”[191]
Mohammad Ali escaped while Mohammed, who was hit on the head, was able to run
up the stairs of the building. A man and a woman chased him up the stairs,
but he was able to enter his apartment and escape further harm. Rahimi,
however, was caught by at least five assailants who entered the building
after him. “They kicked me, punched me and hit me with a beer bottle,
and stabbed me one time next to the heart, one time in the chest, and three
times on the back.”[192]

Responding to a call from a friend
who lives in the building, the police arrived quickly and called an
ambulance. Rahimi was able at the time to identify for the police the man who
had stabbed him, still in front of the building. Mohammed, who witnessed the
attack from the stairway, was also able to identify the man who stabbed
Rahimi. According to both Rahimi and Mohammed, the man and the woman who
chased Mohammed up the stairs were also still in the vicinity, and the
victims pointed them out to the police. They were not detained or questioned
by the police at that time.

While Rahimi was rushed to the hospital,
Mohammed and the alleged stabber were taken to the Aghios Panteleimonas
police station. There, Mohammed saw from a window the same man and woman
standing outside the police station. After he identified them to the police
once again, the police brought the two into the station and advised them that
Mohammed accused them of attacking him. The man and the woman immediately
filed a complaint against Mohammed for false accusation and defamation. All
three, as well as the man accused of stabbing Rahimi, were then put in the
same jail cell. Mohammed told Human Rights Watch,

They [the
police] took my fingerprints and then they sent me in the room with the
person who stabbed [Rahimi] and five to ten minutes later they also brought
the woman and the other man. This woman took pictures of me with her phone
and they made a lot of fun of me. She also talked on the phone and said,
“I’m here with the pig.” And she was also saying on the
phone, “We have no problem, we have no problem, we are Greeks. The
Police told us we are Greeks. We are going to leave now.” I stayed four
hours with them. They were looking at me wildly. But then they calmed down
and the one who stabbed Ali fell asleep and the other two calmed down.[193]

Failure to Acknowledge Severity of Problem

Some of the positive moves noted above suggest that the
Greek authorities are now paying attention to the problem of increasing racist
violence. Furthermore a number of
senior government officials condemned the May 2011 violence against migrants. Then
Minister for Citizen Protection Christos Papoutsis warned that social tension
created “a very high risk of hate crimes,” and government spokesman
Yiorgos Petalotis said the
“spectacle of stabbed immigrants in hospital cannot be accepted by Greek
society. Citizens who live in the centre of Athens and in areas with a big
(crime) problem are right to be frustrated ... but clearly nobody has the right
to take the law into their own hands."[194]

However in many interviews with Human Rights Watch government
interlocutors downplayed the extent of racist and xenophobic violence. First
Instance Head Athens prosecutor Raikou said, “There are a lot of crimes
committed by migrants against Greeks, and also against other migrants…So
we observe a phenomenon of different nationalities fighting each other.”[195]
Major General Vasileios Kousoutis at the Ministry of Citizen Protection, told
us,

In my personal opinion, there is no tendency to have racist
violence. We can’t say it doesn’t happen at all. Many times there
are different motives. Many Greek are victims every day of robbery by migrants.
We can’t say they are racist because they steal from Greeks. There are
also migrant-on-migrant attacks. We have not registered an increase in racism
or xenophobia. Of course individual attacks exist. All attacks that are
reported are investigated, and results are given to the prosecutor.[196]

Furthermore much of the
public debate about migration, both in the aftermath of the May 2011
murder of Manolis Kantaris and in the campaigns leading up to the May 2012
national elections, has focused on the general
issues of crime and insecurity, with far-right party exponents making an
explicit link between increased crime and immigration. Makis Voridis, an
elected parliamentarian with New Democracy (at the time in the opposition),
called for “the immediate
deportation of immigrants” following the murder of Kantaris.[197] A raft of policy measures to address crime in the
city center, announced on May 16, 2011, included primarily measures to crack-down
on irregular immigration.[198]

As well as contributing to social tensions that underlie the
violence and support for extremists, the economic crisis also provides a convenient
excuse for inaction. Echoing the sentiment of many observers, Spryos Rizakos of
the nongovernmental organization Aitima, called the economic situation “a
great excuse for right-wing groups to go after migrants.[199]
At the same time, Maria Kouveli, an elected official on the Athens town
council, remarked that “the economic crisis is so serious, other things
seem less important.”[200]
Calliope Spanou, Greece’s Ombudsperson, agreed, observing that xenophobia
“is not taken seriously as a political issue, it’s seen more as a
luxury issue.”[201]

Recommendations

To the Government of Greece

Publicly and unequivocally condemn instances of racist and
xenophobic violence.

Develop a national strategy on combating racism and xenophobia
that sets out concrete measures and a timetable for implementation, and
designates the government institution responsible for monitoring
implementation.

To the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection

Update the 2010-2014 police operational plan to combat crime in
Athens to include a preventive strategy on xenophobic violence, and ensure
adequate deployment and patrols in areas with high rates of such violence.

Develop and disseminate specific guidelines for police for the
investigation of hate crimes, including racist and xenophobic violence.

Ensure that each police station in central Athens has at least
one officer, or a group of officers, with advanced specialized training in hate
crimes, including racist and xenophobic violence, as well as experience with
investigating extremist activities;

Ensure that all police officers are aware of their duty to
respond diligently to reports of possible hate crimes, and to take positive
steps to prevent such acts.

Adopt a policy and inform all police officers through appropriate
channels that reports of all possible hate crimes should be immediately
transferred to the competent prosecutor’s office regardless of the nature
of the crime and without requiring the 100 Euro fee (US$ 125).

Adopt and disseminate a clear policy providing that undocumented
migrants who are victims of crime will not be subject to detention. A special
streamlined procedure should be established to ensure that such victims are
informed of and can avail themselves of mechanisms to remain in the country
legally, at a minimum for the duration of the judicial process associated with
their complaint.

Launch a public campaign to encourage reporting of hate crimes,
including racist and xenophobic violence, particularly among migrants and
asylum seekers.

Ensure, in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, the swift
creation of a data collection system to record all suspected hate crimes,
including racist and xenophobic violence, disaggregated by type of crime,
victim group, and suspected perpetrators (e.g. if affiliation to an organized
group is suspected or verified).

Extend a request to the Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe for technical assistance in training law enforcement officers in
detecting and investigating hate crimes.

To the Ministry of Justice

Propose amendments to the Criminal Code to improve the scope and
application of the aggravating circumstance of racist motivation, including
through making it an integral part of articles typifying specific crimes such
as bodily harm. Such an approach should not limit application of the
aggravating circumstance to only those crimes.

Ensure, either in law or through binding circulars, that
regardless of the nature of the offense, any crime that may be categorized as a
hate crime is subject to mandatory state action – investigation and
prosecution – without the requirement that victims pay the 100 Euro (US$ 125)
fee.

Ensure appropriate training, including through inclusion of
special seminars in continuing professional education courses, for prosecutors
and judges in national and European anti-racism legislation, and in particular
the aggravating circumstance of racial motivation in the commission of a crime.

Move swiftly to establish a centralized data collection system,
in cooperation with the Ministry of Citizen Protection, to collect and publish
on a regular basis statistics on preliminary investigations, pending trials,
verdicts, and sentences for racially aggravated crimes.

Encourage the creation of designated task forces of prosecutors
specialized in racist crimes. In an interim phase, at least one expert
prosecutor, with specialized training and sensibility, should be appointed to
oversee the work of prosecutors with case-files involving alleged racist
crimes.

To the European Union

The European Commission’s Directorate General for Justice
should assess Greece’s compliance with its obligations under regional
human rights and European Union law, including the Charter for Fundamental
Rights and Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia, with respect
to preventing and prosecuting racist and other hate violence, and report its
findings in its annual report on human rights in the European Union.

The European Commission should allocate funding, including
through its Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Funding Programme, to support
initiatives to address the deficiencies in the Greek response to racist and
xenophobic violence, including specialized training courses for law enforcement
and judiciary personnel and a public campaign to encourage reporting of hate
crimes, including racist and xenophobic violence, particularly among migrants
and asylum seekers.

The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties,
Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) should, in the context of its periodic reports
on fundamental rights in the European Union as well as through other actions, assess
Greece’s compliance with EU law and principles in the field of
anti-racism and discrimination. LIBE attention should highlight the
problem of racist violence in the European Union more broadly and include
recommendations for concrete action to address these concerns.

The Council Working Group on Fundamental Rights (FREMP) should
take up the issue of racist violence in Greece and in the European Union more
broadly, and consider concrete steps to effectively address these concerns at
an EU level.

The EU Fundamental Rights Agency should thoroughly investigate racist
and xenophobic violence in Greece with a view to providing decision-making
institutions such as the European Commission and the European Council with
information and analysis relevant to assessing Greece’s compliance with
its obligations to counter racist and xenophobic violence.

To the Council of Europe

The Commissioner for Human Rights should consider conducting a
country visit to Greece to assess and highlight the situation with respect to
racist and xenophobic violence against migrants and asylum seekers, and
recommend appropriate action to address concerns identified.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)
should follow up on the concerns raised in its 2009 report and consider a statement
about increasing racist and xenophobic violence in Greece, or other immediate
steps, without waiting for Greece to come up for review under the five-year cycle.

To the United Nations

The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants should
ensure that his upcoming visit to Greece includes attention to racist and
xenophobic violence against migrants and asylum seekers, and leads to
recommendations on specific steps to address the concerns identified.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur
on contemporary forms of racism each should consider conducting a country visit
to Greece for the same purpose, and monitor closely and draw attention to the
situation, including through urgent action and communications to the government
on individual cases.

Relevant treaty bodies, including the Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Human Rights Committee, should
request detailed information from the government of Greece about steps taken to
address racist and xenophobic violence in their next reviews of Greece’s
compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination and Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and recommend
concrete action to address concerns identified.

Members of the Human Rights Council should question the Greek
government about steps taken to address racist and xenophobic violence,
including through implementation of the recommendations in this report to
improve police and criminal justice response, during Greece’s second
cycle review under the Universal Periodic Review in 2016.

Acknowledgements

Judith Sunderland, senior researcher, and Eva Cossé,
research assistant, both in the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human
Rights Watch, conducted the research for this report. The report was written by
Judith Sunderland with input from Eva Cossé, and edited by Benjamin
Ward, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division. Veronika
Szente-Goldston, advocacy director in the Europe and Central Asia Division,
reviewed the report and contributed to the recommendations. Aisling
Reidy, senior legal advisor, provided legal review, and Tom Porteous provided
program review. Production assistance was provided by Marina Pravdic,
associate in the Europe and Central Asia Division; Grace Choi, director of
Publications; Kathy Mills, Publications Specialist; and Fitzroy Hepkins, Mail
Manager.

Human Rights Watch is deeply grateful to all those who
helped us conduct our research in Greece. We give particular thanks to
Yunus Mohammadi, Spyros Rizakos, Marianna Tzefarakou, Efthalia Pappa, Tina
Stavrinaki, Evgenia Kouniaki, Mubarak Shah and Saleh Ibrahim, as well as the
staff of Praksis and Doctors of the World. We are especially grateful to all of
the migrants and asylum seekers who spoke to us about their experiences.

Annex: Text of an Anti-Immigrant Manifesto, Athens

GET OUT OF GREECE YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE

You came in Greece uninvited. We Greeks being hospitable and
charitable, accepted you with affection, giving you food, clothes, hospital
care, shelter. BUT NOT FOR EVER AND NOT FOR ALL THE POPULATION OF YOUR
COUNTRIES. You in return, in order to thank us, gave us shop robberies, house
robberies, murders of old people for 10 euros, killings for drug dealing,
assassinations contracts, rapes of women and our grandmothers, beating of old
people, abuse of children, dirt and disease.

You live here with OUR MONEY, WITHOUT WORKING, WITHOUT DOING
ANYTHING AT ALL, JUST SELLING DRUGS AND PROSTITUTION.

This country has no money TO LIVE US GREEKS. We are forced
to accept you in our hospitals that can not serve us, and take your children to
our schools that WE PAY.

WE DON’T WANT TO FEED YOU, we do not want to give
you not 1 euro.

RETURN TO YOUR COUNTRY NOW, TO FIGHT FOR IT. YOU ARE NOT
WANTED HERE. More than 90% of Greek people want you to go away and
never come back and is angry with you and hate you for insulting our dignity.

We are angry with this government and all politicians that
brought you here and support you and defend you AND WE ARE DETERMINED TO
PUNISH THEM AND YOU. From now on, we will take every necessary action in
order to force you and the TRAITORS-POLITICIANS that help you to GET OUT OF
THIS COUNTRY (or what you left of it).

YOU HAVE NO FUTURE IN GREECE. GO HOME NOW.CITIZENS OF
ATHENS

All bolding and capital letters were in the original.

[1]
Ioannis Cholezas and Panos Tsakloglou, “The Economic Impact of
Immigration in Greece: Taking Stock of the Existing Evidence,” Institute
for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper Series, October 2008,
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3754.pdf (accessed April 12, 2012), p. 6. The government
has not yet published the final data of the 2011 census.

[7]For a more detailed discussion, see Human Rights Watch Updated
Submission to the United Nations Committee against Torture, April 2011,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/04/25/updated-human-rights-watch-submission-united-nations-committee-against-torture-greec.

[8]
Eurostat, “Asylum in the EU 27 – The number of asylum applicants
registered in the EU 27 rose to 301,000 in 2011,” news release, March 23,
2012, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-23032012-AP/EN/3-23032012-AP-EN.PDF
(accessed May 17, 2012). Out of 8,670 decisions at first instance, 45
claimants were granted refugee status. Eighty-five were granted
subsidiary protection, and 45 were granted authorization to stay for
humanitarian reasons. The overall recognition rate was 2 percent. A March
2012 progress report on the implementation of Greece’s national action
plan on asylum said the overall recognition rate at first instance was between
1-6 percent, with a recognition rate at second instance at 12 percent.
“Implementation of the Greek National Action Plan on Migration Management
and Asylum Reform (“the Greek Action Plan”) and border management
issues, Progress Report, March 2012, http://aditus.org/mt/aditus/Documents/GreekActionPlanProgressReportMarch2012.pdf
(accessed May 22, 2012).

[10]
Greek Plan of Action on Asylum and Migration Management, State of Play
27.10.2011,
http://www.hcg.gr/sites/default/files/article/attach/%20%CE%A5%CE%9B%CE%9F%CE%A0%CE%9F%CE%99%CE%97%CE%A3%CE%97%CE%A3%20%CE%95%CE%98%CE%9D%CE%99%CE%9A%CE%9F%CE%A5%20%CE%A3%CE%A7%CE%95%CE%94%CE%99%CE%9F%CE%A5%20%CE%94%CE%A1%CE%91%CE%A3%CE%97%CE%A3%2027_10_2011_0.pdf
(accessed April 13, 2012).

[11]
“Greece wants more EU support to tackle irregular migration but is unable
to absorb funds already granted,” Migration News Sheet, May
2012.On file with Human Rights Watch. The name of the Ministry of Citizen
Protection was changed to Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection in
June 2012.

[12]
Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003, February 18, 2003
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:050:0001:0010:EN:PDF
(accessed April 13, 2011) establishing the criteria and mechanisms for
determining the member state responsible for examining an asylum application
lodged in one of the member states by a third-country national, February 25,
2003. The position for unaccompanied children is different, since it does not
require the return of children to a country unless the child has already
claimed asylum there. Human Rights Watch analyzed the problems with the
Dublin-II Regulation on several occasions before, see: Greece/Turkey –
Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the
Greece/Turkey Entrance to the European Union, November 2008,
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/76211/section/8, p. 22.

[13]
Human Rights Council, Mission to Greece Report submitted by the Special
Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment, Manfred Nowak, March 4, 2011, A/HRW/16/52/Add.4,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/50378215/Human-Rights-Council-Mission-to-Greece
(accessed April 3, 2011) (Below: “Mission to Greece Report, March 4,
2011”).

[15]
Human Rights Watch, Greece/Turkey – Stuck in a Revolving Door:
Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/turkey Entrance to
the European Union, November 2008, http://www.hrw.org/en/node/76211.

[62] Youssef had experienced a prior attack in 2009, in which a group of
young men surrounded him when he tried to cross Aghios Panteleimonas
square. Youssef sought help from nearby police officers, pointing to one
of the young men who was walking away. “The police said,
‘don’t point like that, where are you from, you create problems,
what are you doing here.’ They checked my papers and then told me to
leave immediately.” Ibid.

[91]
Human Rights Watch interview with Mahmoud (pseudonym), Athens, December 9,
2011. In our first encounter with the couple, on December 9, 2011, only Mahmoud
spoke. Maria was able to speak for herself in our second encounter, on
May 11, 2012.

[96]
United against Racism and the Fascist Threat, “Racist pogrom in
Aspropyrgos with the protection of the police,” press release, September
11, 2011,
http://www.antiracismfascism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=327:2011-09-11-17-50-32&catid=38:press-releases-announcements&Itemid=150
(accessed April 10, 2012).

[113]
“Six held for migrant attack on Crete,” Kathimerini English
Edition, September 11, 2011, http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_11/09/2011_405782
(accessed April 20, 2012). The 16-year-old’s father was also detained.

[120]
UNHCR, “UNHCR calls for an end to the cycle of violence in Patras”,
Press Release, May 24, 2012,
http://www.unhcr.se/en/media/artikel/c49dc5bafd4ca36f9c122fa2ed3acd4c/unhcr-calls-for-an-end-to-the-cycle.html
(accessed May 24, 2012).

[122] Human Rights committee, General Comment 31, Nature of the General
Legal Obligations on States Parties to the Covenant, U.N. Doc
CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13 (2004): “However the positive obligations on
States Parties to ensure Covenant rights will only be fully discharged if individuals
are protected by the State, not just against violations of Covenant rights by
its agents, but also against acts committed by private persons or
entities…There may be circumstances in which a failure to ensure Covenant
rights…would give rise to violations by States Parties of those rights,
as a result of States Parties’ permitting or failing to take appropriate
measures or to exercise due diligence to prevent, punish, investigate or
redress the harm caused by such acts by private persons or entities,”
para. 8.

[123] ICERD, Adopted and opened for signature and ratification by the
General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) of 21 December 1965, entered into force
January 4, 1969, article 5(b). Greece ratified ICERD on June 18, 1970.

[124] European Convention on Human Rights, Council of Europe
Treaty Series, No. 5, Rome November 4, 1950, ratified by
Greece on November 28, 1974.

[125] ECHR articles 1, 2, and 3. See for example European Court of
Human Rights cases A. v. The United Kingdom, judgment September 23,
1998, para. 22: “The Court considers that the obligation on the High
Contracting Parties under Article 1 of the Convention to secure to everyone
within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention,
taken together with Article 3, requires States to take measures designed to
ensure that individuals within their jurisdiction are not subjected to torture
or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment including such ill-treatment
administered by private individuals;” and Osman v. The United Kingdom,
judgment of October 28, 1998, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998-VII, p.
3159, para 115: “The first sentence of Article 2§1 enjoins the State
not only to refrain from the intentional and unlawful taking of life, but also
to take appropriate steps to safeguard the lives of those within its
jurisdiction…The State’s obligation extends beyond its primary duty
to secure the right to life by putting in place effective criminal law
provisions to deter the commission of offense against the person backed up by
law enforcement machinery for the prevention,
suppression and punishment of breaches of such provisions.”

[128] See Angelova and Iliev v Bulgaria, judgment of July 26, 2007 and Menson and Others v. the United
Kingdom, no. 47916/99, Decision on Admissibility on May 6, 2003,
ECHR 2003-V.

[129]
Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating
certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal
law, Official Journal of the European Union L328, 6 December 2008, http://www.legal-project.org/documents/219.pdf
(accessed March 12, 2010), preamble, para (5).

[135]
Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review: Greece, U.N. Doc
A/HRC/18/13, July 11, 2011,
http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G11/146/11/PDF/G1114611.pdf?OpenElement
(accessed April 20, 2012).

[136]
National Commission for Human Rights, “Suggestions for tackling racist
violence by the police and the judiciary,” press release, June 9, 2011,
http://www.nchr.gr/media/gnwmateuseis_eeda/Site_version2/diakriseis/EEDA_RV_AstynDikfinal.pdf
(accessed July 12, 2011).

[139]
Cited in Ministry of Citizen Protection letter to the National Commission for
Human Rights, signed by Brigadier Ioannis Kalamaras, dated February 25, 2011.On
file with Human Rights Watch.

[140]
Human Rights Watch interview with eight Ministry of Citizen Protection
officials, chaired by Major General Vasileios Kousoutis, director,
International Police Cooperation Division, Ministry of Citizen Protection,
Athens, December 9, 2011; Human Rights Watch interview with Anastassia
Tsoukala, scholar and advisor to the Ministry of Citizen Protection,
representative of the Ministry to the National Commission for Human Rights,
Athens, December 8, 2011.

[141]
Human Rights Watch interview with Anastassia Tsoukala, scholar and advisor to
the Ministry of Citizen Protection, representative of the Ministry to the
National Commission for Human Rights, Athens, December 8, 2011.

[162]
Email communication from Dimitris Zimianitis, a senior Athens prosecutor, June
5, 2012. On file with Human Rights. Exceptions to the requirement to pay the
fee were introduced recently by Law 4055/2012; these include victims of
domestic violence, sexual exploitation and human trafficking, and public
servants who are the victims of crimes in the course of their duties. Victims
of other crimes giving rise to mandatory state action with demonstrated need
should be able to avail themselves of legal aid. Ibid.

[185]
Law no. 3719/2008 (Official Gazette 241/A’/26.11.2008), article 23
(1). It is interesting to note that the Minister of Justice at the time,
Sotirios Hatzigakis, accompanied the proposed amendment with an explanatory
note stating that the reform responded to repeated recommendations from the
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance and though unnecessary was
desirable “in order for our country not to give the impression to the
Council of Europe that it supposedly falls behind in the protection of human
rights and especially the fight against phenomena of racism, xenophobia, and
intolerance.” Amendment no. 347/21 tabled by the Minister of
Justice Sotirios Hatzigakis to the draft law “Reforms for the family, child,
society and other provisions,” October 23, 2008.
http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/bbb19498-1ec8-431f-82e6-023bb91713a9/M-SYMBIOSI.347.pdf
(accessed May 17, 2012).

[186] Draft Law “On combatting expressions of racism and
xenophobia,” article 5, tabled on December 5, 2011. On file with Human
Rights Watch.

Corrections

The July 2012 report, “Hate on the Streets: Xenophobic Violence in Greece” incorrectly stated on pages 10 and 43 of the printed English version and pages 10 and 46 of the printed Greek version that Nikitas Kanakis is the director of Doctors without Borders. He is actually the director of Doctors of the World.